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THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY 


FOREWORD 

VILLARI,  the  critic  of  Italian  letters,  has  repeated  in  his  chapter 
upon  Settembrini  an  anecdote  which  had  much  moved  the  older 
patriot. 

"One  summer  night  two  goatherds  who  had  been  sentenced 
to  the  galleys  were  pacing  a  terrace  in  the  prison  yard  and  gazing 
ecstatically  at  the  starlit  sky.  Said  one  of  them  to  the  other, 
'How  I'd  like  to  have  as  many  sheep  as  there  are  stars  up  above !' 
'Where  would  you  pasture  them?'  asked  his  companion.  'In 
your  meadow.'  .  .  .  'What!  in  my  meadow?'  .  .  .  'Yes, 
I  tell  you  I'd  do  it !'  ...  A  few  minutes  later  one  of  the  two 
men  fell  to  the  ground,  stabbed  to  death  by  the  other." 

Villari  repeats  the  familiar  but  striking  story  because  Settem 
brini  himself  and  a  scholarly  fellow-prisoner,  after  long  ethical 
discussions  upon  the  human  significance  of  the  incident,  came, 
within  a  few  days  and  in  the  course  of  a  like  dispute,  almost  to 
the  very  point  of  its  reenactment.  Indeed,  how  often  in  every 
generation  do  the  controversies  which  divide  foe  from  foe  —  and 
the  sadder  quarrels  which  divide  friend  from  friend  —  arise  out 
of  the  issues  involved  in  the  pasturing  of  imaginary  flocks  upon 
the  plains  of  imaginary  meadows ! 

And  yet,  what,  in  the  deeper  sense,  are  the  real  sheep  upon 
the  real  meadow  except  a  symbol,  —  like  the  star,  —  a  symbol 
temporary  in  its  form  but  representative  in  the  human  mind  of 
an  established,  imperishable  "interest"?  And  what  is  the 
meadow  of  the  inhospitable  friend  but  the  symbol  also  of  an  "in 
terest"?  And  what  are  all  our  conflicts  of  individual  or  social 
life  but  quarrels  concerning  the  symbols  of  apparently  conflicting 
interests?  It  does  not  seem  to  make  so  much  difference,  after 
all,  whether  the  symbol  itself  be  the  flocks  below  or  the  stars  on 


FOREWORD 

high:  the  inward  essential  quarrel  springs  from  an  attitude  of 
mind,  and  involves  those  apparent  oppositions  of  principle  which 
change  their  symbols  but  which  persist,  through  action  and  re 
action,  in  all  the  history  of  our  progress. 

The  discussion  of  any  of  the  issues  of  social  conflict  —  par- 
ticula^ylEelssiies  uf  race  ^  rnayrecall  the  incident  of  the  Italian 
prison.  Men  fight  and  die  in  behalf  of  the  symbols  of  conflicting 
interest.  I  fancy  that  from  the  eternal  standpoint  it  is  as  unreason 
able  —  and  as  reasonable  —  for  men  to  quarrel  about  the  sheep 
as  about  the  stars.  I  say  "as  reasonable,"  because  while  the 
symbols  are  not  important,  the  deeper  issues  which  they  involve 
may  be  as  persistent  and  as  fundamental  as  the  quarrel  between 
light  and  darkness  in  the  soul. 

These  things  we  may  not  change.  The  issues  between  truth 
and  error  will  themselves  remain.  We  may  not  postpone  them 
or  disguise  them.  We  may  seek,  however,  to  remember  and  to 
learn;  to  see  clearly;  to  be  just;  to  gain  something  of  that  sense 
of  perspective  which,  not  without  the  saving  capacity  of  humor, 
divides  lesser  things  from  greater.  But  we  will  also  remember 
that  the  symbols  of  the  quarrel  have  often  a  significance  as  deep 
as  the  peace  of  states;  that  their  issues,  according  to  the  quality 
of  our  stewardship,  may  descend  in  fortune  or  misfortune  to 
millions  other  than  ourselves;  that  the  real  conflict  is  always 
somewhat  deeper  than  a  quarrel  lodged  between  the  meadow  and 
the  stars. 

And  yet  that  impulse  of  murder  which  made  fraternity  im 
possible  came  not  from  this  deeper  conflict,  nor  from  the  meadow, 
nor  from  the  stars,  but  out  of  moods  which  we  may  change ;  out 
of  that  diseased  frenzy  for  possession  through  which  a  man  — 
turning  upon  even  the  partner  of  his  imprisonment  —  has  been 
known  to  destroy  his  one  friend  and  his  only  wealth. 

Through  the  self-conquests  of  a  finer  intelligence  and  a  juster 
temper  he  might  have  achieved  the  winning  of  both.  Such  posses 
sions  are  destroyed  within  us  by  something  lower  than  our  prin 
ciples. 


THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY 


A  DISCUSSION  OF  CERTAIN  PRINCIPLES 

OF   PUBLIC    POLICY    INVOLVED    IN 

THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF   THE 

SOUTHERN   STATES 


BY 

EDGAR   GARDNER    MURPHY 

AUTHOR   OF   "THE   PRESENT   SOUTH" 


OF  THE 
UNlVERs/TY 

OF 
°^/Fn 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,   AND   CO. 

91  AND  93  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,   BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

IQOQ 


(D 


•^    -:,.• 

*^^-iit'$ 


COPYRIGHT,  1909, 
BY   EDGAR  GARDNER  MURPHY. 


All  rights  reserved. 


Plimpton.  Press,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO   MY   MOTHER 
JANIE   GARDNER   MURPHY 


PREFACE 

IN  the  preface  to  the  volume  entitled  "The  Present 
South," 1 1  expressed  the  hope  that  that  series  of  chapters 
might  shortly  be  followed  by  another.  The  fulfilment 
of  the  expectation  has  been  delayed.  Much  of  the 
volume  has  been  written,  yet  the  conditions  of  per 
sistent  ill-health  and  the  pressure  of  other  responsi 
bilities  have  compelled  the  postponement  of  its  publi 
cation. 

In  the  meanwhile,  and  just  as  its  completion  came 
clearly  into  view,  it  became  evident  to  me  that  this 
second  volume  of  essays  should  be  preceded  by  a  more 
explicit  statement  of  those  principles  of  fundamental 
policy  which  both  the  collections  of  essays  were  in 
tended  to  illustrate.  From  this  decision  the  present 
volume  has  resulted;  and  the  second  series  of  papers 
is,  therefore,  again  withheld.  They  are  practically 
ready,  however,  for  the  press;  and  their  publication, 
under  the  title  of  "Issues,  Southern  and  National," 
will  ultimately  follow.  In  this  future  volume  (as  also 
in  "The  Present  South,"  already  published),  there 
will  be  found,  moreover,  a  discussion  of  many  specific 
subjects  —  such  as  agricultural  education,  the  negro 
school,  the  lynching  problem,  the  problem  of  child 

1  "Problems  of  the  Present  South,"  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1904; 
Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.;  New  York  and  London,  1909. 

xi 

217090 


xii  PREFACE 

labor,  compulsory  education,  suffrage  restriction,  the 
new  federalism,  etc.  —  which  do  not  directly  come 
within  the  scope  of  the  present  publication,  but  which 
bear  more  or  less  directly  upon  its  thesis. 

For  the  present  volume  is  an  attempt  to  deal  with  an 
issue  more  general  in  its  nature,  but  none  the  less 
critical  in  its  bearing  upon  the  development  of  our 
Southern  States.  Back  of  all  the  issues  of  the  moment, 
as  they  may  express  themselves  in  this  or  that  phase 
of  definite  legislation  or  of  accepted  custom,  there  lies 
the  question  of  fundamental  attitude.  Where  two 
social  or  racial  groups  —  a  stronger  and  a  weaker  - 
find  themselves  in  inevitable  contact  upon  the  same 
soil,  what  elementary  principles  shall  ultimately  de 
termine  the  policies  of  the  State?  And  by  the  State 
I  here  mean  no  merely  artificial  political  entity,  but  the 
local  organ  and  expression  of  our  social  responsibility. 
Shall  the  principles  of  its  policy,  in  relation  to  its  weaker 
racial  or  social  groups,  be  repressive  or  constructive? 

That,  I  cannot  but  think,  is  the  real  question.  It  is 
because  this  question  has  seemed  to  me  so  fundamental 
and  so  definitive  in  its  nature,  that  many  of  the  technical 
issues  of  ethnology,  and  many  of  our  controversial  dis 
cussions  as  to  the  ultimate  significance  of  "race," 
have  seemed  to  me  comparatively  irrelevant.  The 
man  who  is  apparently  inclined  to  overestimate  the 
significance  of  "race,"  and  the  man  who,  upon  the 
other  hand,  is  inclined  to  ignore  the  importance  of 
racial  distinctions,  are  both  —  as  American  citizens 
of  this  immediate  hour  —  confronted  by  a  definite 
situation.  How  shall  we  deal  with  this  situation? 
To  prove  that  all  men,  ages  ago,  were  much  alike  and 


PREFACE  xiii 

that  we  may  not  declare  dogmatically  against  the 
ultimate  parity  of  racial  groups,  does  not  abolish  the 
obvious  consideration  that  we  have  now  to  deal  with 
the  stubborn  realities  of  a  world  in  which  races  are  not 
upon  a  par  —  either  in  their  social  or  industrial  effi 
ciency  —  and  in  which  the  respective  families  of  men 
are  alike  no  longer.  The  State  cannot  base  a  present 
policy  upon  prehistoric  conditions.  To  do  so  would 
but  entail,  aside  from  its  injury  to  the  stronger  race  and 
to  the  social  whole,  an  even  deeper  injury  to  the  weak. 
In  its  disappointment  of  expectations  such  a  policy 
could  only  increase  the  burden  of  their  despair  and  set 
to  work  within  the  stronger  group  the  inevitable  re 
actions  of  a  still  greater  social  and  political  distrust. 

While,    therefore,   I   cannot    concur    in   what   have 
seemed  to  me  to  be  the  assumptions  involved  in  the     v^ 
argument    of     Professor    Royce,    I    am    also    unable,      / 
upon    the  other   hand,  to    concur  in  the  assumptions 
which  seem  to  me  to  underlie  the  recent  volume  from 
Mr.  Stone.1 

If  the  former  seems  to  underestimate  the  meaning 
of  race,  the  latter  seems  to  me  to  give  to  the  fact  of 

1  See  the  article  "Race  Questions  and  Prejudices,"  by  Josiah 
Royce,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Harvard  University,  in 
the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  April,  1906;  reprinted  in  October, 
1908,  in  his  "Race  Questions  and  Other  American  Problems,"  The 
Macmillan  Company;  and  also  the  volume  by  Mr.  Alfred  Holt  Stone 
and  Mr.  Walter  F.  Willcox,  entitled  "The  American  Race  Problem," 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  1908.  It  is  impossible  within  the  limitations 
of  a  brief  preface  to  enter  fully  upon  the  discussion  of  either  book. 
Each  will  find  fuller  consideration  in  the  volume  on  "Issues,  Southern 
and  National";  and  I  shall  there  attempt,  in  an  essay  entitled  "Are 
there  Lessons  in  Jamaica?"  to  deal  especially  with  Professor  Royce's 
suggestions  as  to  that  Island. 


xiv  PREFACE 

race  a  disproportionate  significance.  That  the  negro 
group  is  relatively  weaker  than  the  white  group  within 
(which  it  has  become  locally  included  is  obvious  indeed; 
Ithat  the  negroes  are,  upon  the  whole,  less  efficient 
lan  the  stronger  race  is  also  obvious.  It  is  true, 
>reover,  that  the  facts  as  to  their  present  moral  and 
'economic  situation  are,  in  many  respects,  an  occasion 
of  grave  and  increasing  apprehension.  But  it  is  also 
well,  I  think,  to  remember  that  there  are  other  facts 
of  brighter  omen;  and  that  many  of  the  facts  which 
are  not  so  bright  —  which  constitute  indeed  some 
of  the  most  formidable  occasions  of  discouragement  - 
lie  partially  at  least  within  the  category  of  "removable 
obstacles."  Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  the  better 
tendencies  of  contemporary  opinion  than  the  growing 
appreciation  of  the  economic  bearing  of  ethical,  political, 
and  social  forces.1  While  it  is  true  that  a  full  and 
accurate  record  of  the  facts  will  contribute  to  the 
making  of  our  policies,  it  is  also  true  that  our  policies 
constantly  contribute  to  the  making  of  the  facts,  —  the 

1  See  particularly  "The  Limits  of  Political  Economy,"  by  Fred 
eric  Harrison,  in  his  "National  and  Social  Problems,"  p.  263.  I 
am  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  Mr.  Harrison's  criticisms  of  the 
average  economist  are  less  applicable  to-day  than  in  the  year  1865, 
when  they  were  first  printed.  Marshall  himself,  the  leading  econo 
mist  of  the  conservative  school,  has  said,  "Ethical  forces  are  among 
those  of  which  the  economist  has  to  take  account.  Attempts  have  been 
made  to  construct  an  abstract  science  with  regard  to  the  actions  of  an 
"economic  man,"  who  is  under  no  ethical  influences  and  who  pur 
sues  pecuniary  gain  warily  and  energetically,  but  mechanically  and 
selfishly.  But  they  have  not  been  successful.  .  .  .  His  normal 
motives  have  always  been  tacitly  assumed  to  include  the  family 
affections.  .  .  .  But  if  they  include  these,  why  should  they  not 
include  all  other  altruistic  motives  the  action  of  which  is  so  far  uni 
form  in  any  class  at  any  time  and  place,  that  it  can  be  reduced  to  a 


PREFACE  xv 

spontaneity,  industry  and  resiliency  of  labor  being  in 
timately  responsive  to  the  moral  appreciation  and  the 
legal  and  economic  position  accorded  it  in  the  general 
social  policy  of  the  state.  That  the  negro's  powers  are 
not  the  powers  of  the  white  man,  and  that  his  present 
capacities  are  at  many  points  not  equal  to  the  economic 
competition  presented  by  the  stronger  race,  is  due  in 
part  to  the  fact  that  the  negro  is  a  negro:  but  how 
far  is  it  also  due  to  the  fact  that  that  sense  of  "security 
as  to  his  property  and  his  person,"  which  is  the  best 
school  of  the  economic  virtues,  has  not  alwaysT^en 
adequately  permitted  him,  and  that  that  "hope," 
without  which,  as  Marshall  declares,  "there  is  no  enter 
prise,"  is  as  yet  but  partially  enjoyed?  The  fact  that 
the  negro  is  a  negro,  the  State  may  not  alter;  but  the 
fact  that  trie  negro  —  quite  as  much  at  the  North  as 
at  the  South  —  has  not  been  adequately  accorded  the 
economic  support  of  the  profounder  social  forces  of 
security,  opportunity,  and  hope,  the  State  may  largely 
alter  if  it  will.  Will  it  do  so? 

general  rule?  There  seems  to  be  no  reason.  .  .  .  This  principle 
is  applied  not  only  to  the  ethical  quality  of  the  motives  by  which  a 
man  may  be  influenced  in  choosing  his  ends,  but  also  to  the  sagacity, 
the  energy,  and  the  enterprise  with  which  he  pursues  those  ends." 
And  as  to  the  influences  which  awaken  and  strengthen  the  forces  of 
sagacity,  energy,  and  enterprise,  Marshall  says,  "Freedom  and  hope 
increase  not  only  man's  willingness  but  also  his  power  for  work; 
physiologists  tell  us  that  a  given  exertion  consumes  less  of  the  store 
of  nervous  energy  if  done  under  the  stimulus  of  pleasure  than  of  pain; 
and  without  hope  there  is  no  enterprise.  .  .  .  Security  of  person 
and  property  are  two  conditions  of  this  hopefulness  and  free 
dom."  See  "The  Principles  of  Economics,"  by  Alfred  Marshall, 
Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
England,  p.  vi  of  the  Preface,  and  p.  250,  Vol.  I.  See  also  the  quo 
tation  from  Mill,  on  p.  146  of  the  present  volume. 


xvi  PREFACE 

To  present,  at  least  in  some  degree,  a  basis  for  an 
affirmative  answer  to  that  question,  is  the  purpose  of 
this  volume.  For  it  is  a  question  which  directly  con 
cerns  not  merely  the  fate  of  the  negro  and  the  health 
of  the  national  life,  but  the  fortunes  of  the  stronger 
race  in  our  Southern  States.  I  have  written  primarily, 
therefore,  as  a  Southerner  to  the  South.  And  yet  while 
I  cannot  but  think  that  the  South  has  much  to  correct 
and  to  overcome  in  her  readjustment  to  the  tragic  fate 
in  which  she  has  become  involved,  I  trust  that  she  will 
never  so  far  modify  her  feeling  in  reference  to  the 
validity  of  social  differentiations  as  to  minimize  the 
significance  of  race.  No  sound  assumption  of  democ 
racy  demands  it.  Every  true  interest  of  humanity 
forbids  it.  When  the  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Har 
vard  University  speaks,  as  Southern  men  have  often 
spoken,  of  the  morbid  and  excuseless  exaggerations  of 
racial  feeling  —  so  frequently  exhibited  in  the  relations 
of  racial  groups,  —  one  who  has  long  lived  within  a 
scene  of  racial  contrasts  can  understand  the  value  of  his 
message;  but  when  he  seems  to  question  the  serious 
basis  of  that  feeling,  declares  that  "our  so-called  race 
problems  are  merely  the  problems  caused  by  our  an 
tipathies,"  places  the  race  antipathies  of  social  groups 
among  "the  childish  phenomena  of  our  lives,"1  and 
assures  us  that  they  belong  "on  a  level  with  a  dread  of 
snakes  and  mice"  ("phenomena  that  we  share  with 
the  cats  and  with  the  dogs"),  the  man  who  is  familiar, 
at  first  hand,  with  the  complexities  of  race  adjustment 
under  the  conditions  of  a  democracy  must  register 

1  See  page  48  of  Professor  Royce's  "  Race  Questions,"  etc.,  to  which 
I  have  already  referred  on  page  xiii. 


PREFACE  xvii 

his  protest.  A  sane  and  righteous  and  wholesome  ad 
justment  of  race  relations  is  not  advanced  by  a  spuri 
ous  "catholicity  of  race"  which  would  ignore  the  very 
existence  of  the  factors  which  give  to  our  problem  its 
reality.  An  amity  of  inter-racial  appreciation  which 
would  not  merely  value  and  applaud  (as  we  must) 
the  finer  phases  of  the  individuality  of  each,  but  which 
would  seem  to  find  in  that  individuality  itself  something 
to  belittle  or  deny,  is  not,  in  its  principle,  either  a  counsel 
of  praise  or  a  grace  of  healing.  It  is  but  a  subtle  way 
of  saying  to  the  weaker  group  that  it  has  nothing  in 
dividual,  nothing  peculiar  to  itself,  which  it  must 
sacredly  conserve  in  the  interest  of  all;  it  is  also  but 
a  subtle  way  of  making  it  impossible  to  say  to  the 
stronger  group  that  its  individuality  is,  in  all  its  finer 
and  happier  achievement,  a  thing  too  sacred,  too  in 
dispensable  to  the  service  of  the  world,  to  be  de 
livered  upon  the  one  hand  to  the  dragging  pressure  of 
lower  groups,  or  to  be  surrendered,  upon  the  other 
hand,  to  those  self-corrupting  antipathies  to  which 
it  is  forever  tempted. 

There  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  racial  cosmopolitanism 
which  is  quite  as  morbid  as  the  provincialism  of  the 
mob,  and  quite  as  dangerous  (were  it  ever  given  its 
full  institutional  expression)  to  the  peace  of  states 
and  the  deeper  interests  of  civilization.  Men  must 
conduct  the  business  of  government  not  alone  upon  the 
basis  of  their  unity,  but  also  upon  the  basis  of  their 
diversities.  We  are  confronted  by  vast  accumulated 
and  entrenched  realities  of  emotion  and  conviction, 
of  social  instinct  and  historic  tradition,  of  collective 
necessity  and  of  palpable  experience,  which  cannot  be 


xviii  PREFACE 

composed  by  placing  the  phenomena  of  race  antipathy 
"on  a  level  with  a  dread  of  snakes  and  mice."  That 
may  be  the  "  psychology"  of  it,  but  that  is  not  the  daily 
truth  of  it  —  nor  the  broader  wisdom  of  it,  as  we  take 
up  the  problems  of  public  policy,  and  attempt  the  per 
plexing  task  of  democratic  administration.  And  that 
that  is  not  even  the  psychology  of  it,  I  am  inclined  to 
believe,  as  I  weigh  the  passages  in  which  another  has 
defined  "the  original  and  elementary  subjective  fact" 
in  society  itself.  These  offer,  at  least  in  some_  measure, 
not  a  justification  of  race  antipathies,  but  an  expla 
nation  of  that  instinctive  consciousness  of  race  and 
of  that  persistent  individuality  of  racial  character 
of  which  our  antipathies  are  the  aberrations.  We 
read :  — 

"In  the  subjective  interpretation  [of  society]  it  will  be 
necessary,  as  we  already  know,  to  start  from  that  new  datum 
which  has  been  sought  for  hitherto  without  success,  but  which 
can  now  no  longer  remain  unperceived  in  the  narrowing 
range  of  inquiry.  .  .  . 

"  The  original  and  elementary  subjective  fact  in  society  is 
the  consciousness  of  kind.  By  this  term  I  mean  a  state  of 
consciousness  in  which  any  being,  whether  low  or  high  in 
the  scale  of  life,  recognizes  another  conscious  being  as  of 
like  kind  with  itself.  Such  a  consciousness  .  .  .  acts 
on  conduct  in  many  ways,  and  all  the  conduct  that  we  can 
properly  call  social  is  determined  by  it.  ... 

"In  its  widest  extension  the  consciousness  of  kind  marks 
off  the  animate  from  the  inanimate.  Within  the  wide  class 
of  the  animate  it  next  marks  off  species  and  races.  Within 
racial  lines  the  consciousness  of  kind  underlies  the  more 
definite  ethnical  and  political  groupings,  it  is  the  basis  of 
class  distinctions,  of  innumerable  forms  of  alliance,  of  rules 


PREFACE  xix 

of  intercourse,  and  of  peculiarities  of  policy.  Our  conduct 
toward  those  whom  we  feel  to  be  most  like  ourselves  is 
instinctively  and  rationally  different  from  our  conduct 
toward  others,  whom  we  believe  to  be  less  like  ourselves. 

"Again,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  kind,  and  nothing  else, 
which  distinguishes  social  conduct,  as  such,  from  purely 
economic,  purely  political,  or  purely  religious  conduct; 
for  it  is  precisely  the  consciousness  of  kind  that,  in  actual 
life,  continually  interferes  with  the  theoretically  perfect 
operation  of  the  economic,  the  political,  or  the  religious 
motive.  .  .  . 

"In  a  word,  it  is  about  the  consciousness  of  kind,  as  a 
determining  principle,  that  all  other  motives  organize  them 
selves  in  the  evolution  of  social  choice,  social  volition,  or 
social  policy.  .  .  . 

"The  consciousness  of  kind  being  the  psychological 
basis  of  social  phenomena,  it  follows  that  the  supreme 
object  of  social  value  is  the  kind  itself,  or  the  type  of  con 
scious  life  that  is  characteristic  of  the  society.  Each  nation 
supremely  values  its  own  characteristic  qualities,  and  it  is 
this  social  self-valuation  that  we  call  national  [or  racial] 
prejudice.  It  is  the  essence  of  the  Briton's  love  of  things 
British,  of  the  American's  pride  in  things  American.  .  .  . 

"Next  to  the  type  in  social  value  is  the  social  cohesion. 
The  existence  of  a  society  depends  on  its  unity,  and  when 
its  integrity  is  threatened,  the  community  shows  itself  ready 
to  make  any  sacrifice  that  may  be  necessary  to  save  union. 
The  most  splendid  examples  of  social  feeling  have  been 
the  patriotic  enthusiasms  that  have  been  aroused  by  the 
threatened  disruption  of  nations  [and  races].  As  a  bond 
of  cohesion  loyalty  is  valued  in  every  community  in  which 
social  feeling  is  normally  developed  .  .  ."  etc.1 

1  "The  Principles  of  Sociology,"  by  Franklin  Henry  Giddings, 
Professor  of  Sociology  in  Columbia  University  in  the  city  of  New 
York;  pp.  17,  18  and  pp.  147,  148;  third  edition,  New  York  and 


xx  PREFACE 

That  the  consciousness  of  kind  has  often  expressed 
itself  in  irrational  and  exaggerated  forms  the  author 
of  the  paragraphs  which  I  have  quoted  would  probably 
be  the  last  to  deny.  The  instinct  of  race  has  been  a 
destructive  as  well  as  an  integrating  influence.  But 
the  correction  of  the  false  by-products  of  great  elemental 
social  forces  does  not  tome  through  the  belittling  of 
those  forces,  but  through  their  wiser  discipline  and 
their  true  direction. 

The  consciousness  of  race  we  cannot  deny,  but  we 
can  educate  it  into  finer  forms.  By  increasing  both 
the  intelligence  of  its  self-knowledge  and  the  security 
of  its  basis  we  may  enlarge  the  scope  of  its  sympathies 
as  well  as  the  faculties  of  its  self-control.  For  we  learn 
to  sympathize  with  the  race-struggle  of  other  social 
f  groups,  not  through  a  denial  of  its  reality  or  by  depre 
ciating  its  significance,  but  through  the  knowledge  in 
our  own  life  of  what  a  race-standpoint  and  a  race- 
struggle  are,  and  through  the  revealing  power  of 
that  intenser  social  individuality  within  ourselves  which 
alone  makes  really  possible  an  appreciation  of  the 
individuality  of  others.  This  truer  ground  of  inter 
racial  appreciation  may  not  be  at  once  attained.  There 
will  be  failures  of  administration  and  failures  of  reti 
cence.  But  those  who  have  followed  Professor  Royce 
in  his  criticisms  of  these  two  phases  of  our  delayed  at 
tainment  will  not  altogether  forget  that  the  task  of 
administration,  as  it  has  devolved  upon  the  South,  is  not 

London,  1900.  The  words  in  brackets  are  inserted  by  myself 
merely  to  indicate  what  seems  to  me  to  be  the  further  bearing  of  the 
passage  on  the  phenomena  of  race.  With  both  the  Greek  and  the 
Jew  the  patriotism  of  race  preceded,  and  outlived,  the  existence  of 
the  state.  —  E.  G.  M. 


PREFACE  xxi 

yet  wholly  free  of  the  embarrassments  bequeathed  from 
an  unfortunate  period  of  maladministration  which  pre 
ceded;  and  that  even  the  task  of  reticence — in  view  of  the 
by  no  means  inflexible  reticence  of  New  England  upon  the 
negro  question  —  will  not  improbably  present  its  diffi 
culties.  And  yet,  while  an  acute  self-consciousness, 
racial  as  well  as  sectional,  has  naturally  followed  from 
the  fact  that  the  South  has  been  placed  -go-largely -on 
the  defensive,  and  while  the  tendency  of  defensive 
activities  is  to  develop  the  negative  rather  than  the 
constructive  capacities  of  social  groups,  the  South  is 
beginning  to  stir  with  a  freer  and  stronger  spirit.  But 
it  will  not  soon  be  possible  to  ignore  the  fact  that  hers 
are  all  the  problems  of  other  sections  —  and  another 
problem  added;  all  the  tasks,  religious,  educational, 
economic,  of  other  democratic  peoples  —  and  another 
task  beside;  a  problem  and  a  task  which,  like  a  new 
term  in  a  formula  of  chemical  reactions,  will  give  new 
phases  and  an  altered  outline  to  many  of  the  familiar 
adjustments  of  more  homogeneous  groups. 

Does  any  one  suppose  that  the  perplexities  which 
thus  move  us  are  chosen  as  a  pastime  ?  There  is  much 
that  is  suggestive  in  the  new  racial  cosmopolitanism 
which  is  so  rightly  (if  somewhat  raspingly)  insistent 
that  we  shall  appreciate  all  the  difficulties  of  the  "back 
ward  races  of  mankind  " ;  but  I  trust  that  it  is  not  too 
much  to  hope  that  this  cosmopolitanism  will  become 
ultimately  so  comprehensive  that  from  its  broad  and 
genuine  solicitude  the  strain  and  perplexities  of  the 
white  race  will  not  be  necessarily  excluded. 

For  the  South  is  just  now  immediately  concerned 
with  a  task  of  statesmanship,  rather  than  with  a 


xxii  PREFACE 

psychology  of  racial  origins  upon  the  one  hand,  or  with 
the  subtle  melancholy  of  economics  upon  the  other. 
Not  that  either  is  to  be  despised.  Every  truth  of  a  just 
psychology,  every  fact  and  inference  of  a  sound  body 
of  economic  science,  will  directly  bear  upon  the  policies 
of  the  state.  And  yet  I  can  conceive  of  no  truth  from 
either  source  that  can  alter  the  essential  form  of  the 
practical  question  with  which  we  have  to  do.  It  is 
the  same  for  pessimist  or  optimist.  Starting  with  the 
fact  that  the  negro  is  a  negro  and  that  his  capacities, 
upon  the  average,  are  not  the  capacities  of  the  white 
man,  — what  shall  be  the  policy  of  the  state  toward 
such  capacities  as  he  has?  Shall  it  be  a  policy  of  ne 
gation  or  of  development? 

It  is  in  the  conviction  that  within  the  answer  to  this 
question  there  lie,  for  our  Southern  States,  the  ulti 
mate  issues  of  social  health  and  power  that  this  volume 
has  been  written.  And  the  principles  of  public  policy 
which  may  well  determine  the  course  of  our  develop 
ment  possess  a  significance  not  wholly  restricted  within 

the  boundaries  of  our  local  task. 

E.  G.  M. 

MONTGOMERY,  ALABAMA, 
March  23,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

THE  INDIVISIBLE  INHERITANCE i 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  PROTEST  OF  OUR  SELF-PROTECTION         .        .        .13 

CHAPTER   III 
THE  IMPULSE  OF  RACE  AGGRESSION        ....      23 

CHAPTER   IV 
THE    INADEQUACY    OF    REPRESSION    AS    A    POLICY    OF 

ULTIMATE  ADJUSTMENT 37 

CHAPTER   V 
THE  DOUBLE  BASIS  OF  OUR  RACE  SECURITY          .        .      49 

CHAPTER   VI 

NEGRO    RACE    INTEGRITY:   THE    SCHOOL  OF  SELF-DIS 
COVERY         7! 

CHAPTER   VII 
THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY:    DESPAIR 

AS  A  FORCE  OF  DISINTEGRATION      •        •        •        •      95 

CHAPTER   VIII 
THE  FATE  OF  THE  STRONG 119 


xxiv  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   IX 

PAGE 

THE  EDUCATIVE  POWER  OF  SOCIAL  REACTIONS     .        .141 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  NEW  COERCION         .....  •     J73 

CHAPTER  XI 
ASCENDANCY     . 

INDEX  .......    249 


THE   INDIVISIBLE   INHERITANCE 


THE    BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   INDIVISIBLE  INHERITANCE 

IT  is  so  frequently  assumed  that  the  most  significant 
factor  in  the  history  of  our  negro  population  is  the 
factor  of  its  exploitation  that  a  word  of  contradiction 
is  never  quite  out  of  place.  Within  its  actual  en 
vironment,  whether  North  or  South,  this  population 
has  suffered  much,  but  it  has  received  more.  It  has 
become  involved  so  inextricably  in  the  fate  of  a  far  more 
efficient  social  group  that  the  conditions  of  progress 
within  this  stronger  group  have  become  the  conditions 
which  must  surround  and  advance  the  life  and  fortunes 
of  the  weaker. 

Some  of  the  conditions  of  progress  for  the  stronger 
(such  physical  conditions  as  the  influence  of  the  colder 
climate  of  our  continent,  such  social  tendencies  as  the 
rapid  development  of  our  cities)  may  operate  to  the  dis 
advantage  of  the  weaker ;  but  it  is  true,  upon  the  whole, 
that  the  negro  and  his  children  have  become  with  us 
—  and  whether  we  will  or  no  —  the  joint  beneficiaries 
of  our  civil,  educational,  and  political  heritage.  It  is 
the  truth;  and  it  is  well  for  us  at  the  South  to  face 
it,  just  as  it  is  also  well  for  our  friends  at  the  North, 
in  fact  for  all  who  appreciate  the  institutional  solidarity 
of  the  Republic,  to  face  it  with  us.  For  while  its 
history  may  be  sectional,  its  consequences  —  the  subtle 

3 


4  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

invasions  of  its  good  or  its  evil  —  will  necessarily  be 
general. 

The  negro  has  been  subjected  to  intentional  and^ 
therefore,  but  partial  discriminations,  —  for  it  is  ]n_ 
vain  that  men  plan  to  withhold  advantages  which  no 
man  can  escape.  The  suffrage  of  the  blacks  has 
indeed  been  sharply  limited  by  statute,  but  the  very 
act  of  limitation  has  involved  a  narrowing  of  the  basis 
of  the  whole  electorate.  Drastic  declarations  as  to  the 
divisions  of  privilege  on  racial  lines  were  everywhere 
published.  Indiscriminate  immunities  were  proclaimed 
for  white  men.  Ruthless  discriminations  were  pro 
nounced  against  black  men.  The  battle  raged.  The 
clouds  of  conflict  have  rolled  away.  Within  less  than 
ten  years  thousands  of  the  worthier  black  men, 
under  our  amended  constitutions,  have  been  admitted 
to  the  ballot;  and  in  Alabama  alone,  in  the  first 
presidential  election  after  the  readjustment  of  the 
suffrage,  more  than  half  of  our  adult  white  men  did 
not  qualify  and  vote.  Despite  all  the  frank  assertions 
of  discrimination  on  the  part  of  the  South,  despite  all 
the  imputations  of  discrimination  from  the  side  of  the 
North,  the  thing  which  the  Southern  majority  declared 
should  happen  and  which  the  Northern  majority  de 
nounced  as  having  happened  has  not  happened  at  all. 
Many  negroes  have  been  admitted.  Many  white  men 
have  been  excluded. 

Some  measure  of  discrimination  has  been  effected. 
Everywhere  there  arise  discriminations,  in  one  form 
or  another,  against  the  weak;  and  the  race  possessing 
the  most  weakness  has  naturally  suffered  the  greater 
discriminations.  But  beneath  and  within  these  arti- 


I  THE   INDIVISIBLE    INHERITANCE  5 

ficial  discriminations  from  without,  there  has  worked 
-  by  subtle,  inexorable  processes  of  self-administra 
tion  —  the  levelling  and  equalizing  force  of  individual 
capacity.  For,  after  all,  the  only  permanent  exclusion 
from  political  influence  in  a  democracy  is  self-ex 
clusion,  —  the  self-exclusion  of  ignorance,  indifference, 
incapacity.  Where  these  existed,  the  law  could  not 
be  framed  so  liberally  as  to  enfranchise ; *  where 
these  have  not  existed,  —  where  knowledge,  interest, 
capacity,  have  even  measurably  prevailed, — the  law 
could  not  be  framed  so  illiberally  as  to  disfranchise. 
I  speak  not  narrowly  or  literally,  within  the  perspective 
of  a  day,  but  broadly  and  fundamentally  —  within  the 
perspective  of  a  generation. 

This  is  that  deeper  fact  of  things  upon  which  the 
crude  negro  governments  of  the  Reconstruction  period 
went  to  pieces ;  this  is  also  the  fact  in  reference  to  which 
every  exaggerated  righting  of  that  reconstruction,  every 
undemocratic  element  in  our  more  recent  readjustments 
of  the  suffrage,  will  find  correction.  There  is  no  point 
within  the  organic  structure  of  American  society  at 
which,  or  about  which,  an  artificial  or  arbitrary  politi 
cal  discrimination  can  intrench  itself.  Our  common 
institutions  are  a  common  freehold. 

Let  no  man  assert,  moreover,  that  the  possibilities 
of  discrimination  have  been  defeated  by  the  letter  of 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment.  As  I  have  observed  its 
political  influence,  it  has  operated  chiefly  as  an  irri- 

1  See  p.  1 29  of  this  volume,  and,  especially,  the  author's  paper, 
"  Shall  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  be  Enforced  ? "  in  the  North 
American  Review,  January,  1905 ;  to  be  reprinted  in  "  Issues,  South 
ern  and  National," 


6  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

tation.  It  has  provoked  the  distinctions  it  was  os 
tensibly  established  to  defeat.  As  a  formal  enactment 
it  has  accomplished  little,  except  in  so  far  as  the  truth 
upon  which  we  have  just  dwelt  has  begun  to  work, 
with  the  power  of  its  resistless  equalizations,  beneath 
the  arbitrary  adjustments  of  the  State.  And  this  deep, 
prevailing  principle  of  things  —  this  remorseless  equity 
of  nature,  existing  long  before  the  enactment  of  the 
Amendment,  first  operated,  after  its  enactment,  to 
annul  the  intentions  which  many  of  its  advocates 
desired  it  to  impose. 

Its  letter  was  first  established  to  exclude  and  con 
found  the  political  capacity  of  white  men,  to  strengthen 
those  discriminations  which  had  already  placed  the 
governments  of  the  South  in  the  hands  of  our  negro 
ignorance,  venality,  and  incapacity,  and  to  perpetuate 
(under  the  guise  of  the  federal  protection  of  the  weak) 
the  political  proscription  of  the  strong.1  It  declared 

1  There  were  many  generous  spirits  at  the  North  who  gave  their 
support  to  such  policies  as  Thaddeus  Stevens  had  represented,  not 
because  they  were  moved  by  a  partisan  or  vindictive  animus,  but  be 
cause  they  were  persuaded  that  the  negro  would  find  in  the  ballot  his 
only  effective  protection.  I  am  reluctantly  forced  to  the  conclusion, 
however,  that  this  was  the  motive  of  the  minority  (made  up  chiefly  of 
sincere  philanthropists,  and  men  of  letters),  and  that  the  darker  spirit 
of  Mr.  Stevens  seems  to  have  been  representative  of  the  majority  of 
his  party.  Such  an  impression  is  not  due  so  much  to  Southern  tes 
timony  as  to  the  records  of  the  Congressional  debates,  to  such  North 
ern  witnesses  as  Mr.  Elaine,  the  late  Carl  Schurz  (see  his  speech  in  the 
U.S.  Senate,  January,  1872,  quoted  on  p.  178  of  this  volume),  and  Mr. 
James  Ford  Rhodes,  whose  sixth  and  seventh  volumes  in  his  "His 
tory  of  the  United  States  "are  of  especial  value:  not  that  I  would 
make  either  Mr.  Schurz  or  Mr.  Rhodes  the  responsible  author  of  my 
impressions,  any  more  than  I  should  always  literally  concur  in  their 
interpretation  of  the  sources  of  the  period. 


I  THE    INDIVISIBLE    INHERITANCE  7 

that  no  State  should  discriminate  against  any  class 
of  its  citizens  upon  the  ground  of  race;  yet  the  Recon 
struction  measures  (by  sweeping  disabilities  already 
laid  on  the  "disloyal,"  i.e.  on  all  those  who  had  par 
ticipated  in  "the  late  rebellion")  had  so  operated  toward 
the  creation  of  a  class  citizenship  that  the  practical 
effect  of  the  Amendment  was  but  further  to  confirm 
the  discriminations  which  its  letter  now  condemned.1 
Its  immediate  issue,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
legislation  previously  imposed,  was  a  discrimination 
against  the  white  man  in  the  interest  of  the  black. 
For,  within  a  scene  of  political  impartiality,  the  result 
of  a  decree  of  non-discrimination  is  justice;  but  a 
decree  of  non-discrimination  imposed  within  a  scene 
of  social  distortion  and  of  pre-established  partiality 
is  something  less  than  justice  and  something  more  than 
restitution. 

Yet  the  presumptive  impartiality  of  the  State,  the  equal 
and  even  status  of  every  class  before  the  law,  became, 
as  is  the  tendency  in  democracies,  a  force  corrective  of 
the  forms  which  had  obscured  it.  The  outward  terms 
of  the  Reconstruction  adjustment  were  annulled  by  the 
natural  working  of  the  truth  which  they  were  first 
framed  to  express  and  then  administered  to  defeat. 
This  truth  lies,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  very  equity  of 
nature,  is  of  a  piece  with  the  intimate  structure  of  so 
ciety  itself,  is  of  the  soul  of  constitutions,  because  it 

1  The  exclusion  of  practically  the  whole  resident  white  population 
as  "  the  disloyal "  could  not  but  operate  (automatically)  as  an  arbi 
trary  exclusion  of  race  (the  white  race),  and  was,  in  principle,  the 
precedent  for  the  "  grandfather  clause  "  of  a  later  period,  —  a  clause 
which  under  a  similar  arbitrary  device  excluded  so  large  a  majority  of 
the  blacks. 


8  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

is  of  the  essence  of  social  order,  there  being  no  legis 
lative  or  arbitrary  way  to  make  those  strong  who  are 
not  strong  or  to  make  those  weak  who  are  not  weak. 
Those  with  the  capacity  for  government  will  govern. 

It  is  this  truth  which  overthrew  the  Republican 
discriminations  against  the  political  privileges  of  white 
men ;  it  is  this  truth  —  not  any  attempted  legislative 
expression  of  it  —  which  has  slowly  modified  the  Demo 
cratic  discriminations  against  the  political  privileges  of 
the  negro.  In  the  long  run  our  political  proscriptions 
in  America  are  always  defeated  by  forces  deeper  than 
those  of  external  inhibition,  by  the  realities  of  inherent 
right  and  power  as  these  have  obtained  between  man 
and  man,  —  by  that  ignorance  and  helplessness  in  one 
because  of  which  he  cannot  rule  (no  matter  by  what 
names  we  may  exalt  him  or  how  low  the  obeisance 
we  may  make  to  him),  and  by  that  interest  and  aptitude 
in  another  because  of  which  he  cannot  be  enslaved. 
It  is  a  result  which  we  may  detest  or  may  desire;  it 
is  not  a  result  which  we  may  permanently  change, 
nor  is  it  a  result  which  a  member  of  any  stronger  race 
should  care  for  one  moment  to  have  otherwise.  By 
reason  of  the  inherent,  unyielding  processes  which 
ceaselessly  adjust  and  readjust  the  fortunes  and  rela 
tions  of  men  it  is  inevitable  in  a  democracy  that  political 
prerogatives  should  slowly  but  surely  fall  from  the  hands 
of  those  who  are  too  ignorant  or  too  indifferent  to  wield 
them;  that  discriminations  based  upon  arbitrary  dis 
tinctions  should  be  written  in  water;  that  the  only 
way  in  which  a  particular  class  may  hope  to  hold  the 
prerogatives  of  a  superior  race  —  under  the  educa 
tional  or  industrial  or  political  conditions  of  our  Ameri- 


I  THE   INDIVISIBLE    INHERITANCE  9 

can  society  —  is  to  be  superior,  and  that  however  or 
wherever  we  may  hope  to  base  the  enduring  ascendancy 
of  one  race  as  against  another,  we  shall  in  vain  seek 
such  a  basis  in  any  artificial  readjustment  of  our  in 
stitutions.  The  law  that  "His  rain  falleth  on  the  just 
and  on  the  unjust "  is  not  more  inexorable  than  the 
silent,  implicit  ordinance  of  our  democracy  that,  though 
there  may  be  races  many  and  classes  many,  yet  that 
class  as  class  shall  never  rule.  At  the  throne  of  power 
our  differentiations  are  abdicated ;  it  is  humanity  which 
governs. 

The  suffrage,  however,  presents  naturally  the  point 
at  which  any  weaker  race  will  enter  least  fully  into 
that  solidarity  of  our  institutions  of  which  we  have 
been  thinking.  Among  all  our  common  benefits  the 
benefits  of  prerogative  will  come  last.  How  much  the 
negro  shares,  how  much  he  has  inherited  in  the  abun 
dance  of  our  social  fortunes,  will  appear  still  further, 
as  we  note  his  more  general  advantages  in  contrast 
.with  those  of  any  like  number  of  the  race  elsewhere. 
He  enjoys  his  religious  and  civil  freedom,  but  these 
were  won  for  him  and  not  by  him.  In  his  past  stands 
no  long  history  of  spiritual  adventure,  of  social  strug 
gle  and  civic  education,  —  no  memories  of  a  Martel 
at  Tours,  of  a  Luther  at  Worms,  of  a  Thomas  More 
at  London.  Magna  Charta  and  the  Bill  of  Rights 
are  the  historic  symbols  of  a  collective  struggle,  of  a 
social  and  political  achievement,  to  which  he  has  not 
contributed,  but  within  which  he  has  been  adopted. 
The  very  law  which  he  now  invokes  has  come  up  out 
of  the  suffering  and  patience  of  another  social  group. 
It  is  the  flowering  of  the  consciousness  of  another  race, 


to  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

is  in  its  genius  and  expression  the  white  man's  law  - 
made  out  of  the  texture  of  the  white  man's  experience, 
and  shot  through  and  through  with  the  instinctive  as 
sumptions  of  a  psychology  to  which  the  negro  as  a 
negro  is  largely  alien.  This  is  one  reason  why  he  makes 
no  intimate  response  to  it,  why  it  is  hard  for  the  negro 
as  a  negro  to  understand  it  and  obey  it. 

And  yet  this  law  is  his.  It  is  about  him  from  his 
infancy.  It  is  his  heritage.  It  is  not  nicely  adjusted 
to  his  racial  needs,  to  his  native  tendencies,  but  it  is 
the  only  law  there  is;  and,  exacting  as  it  may  appear, 
it  takes  up  his  nature  within  the  forms  of  its  familiar 
practice  and  shapes  him  in  conformity  with  its  human 
type.  That  it  does  not  destroy  him  wholly,  that  he, 
in  spite  of  much  mental  and  moral  catastrophe, 
is  slowly  responding  to  its  expectations,  is  evidence  of 
that  adaptability  of  nature  which  is  one  of  his  strongest 
characteristics.  As  time  passes,  the  blessings  —  to 
him  —  of  the  fate  in  which  he  is  involved  are  likely 
to  become  more  evident.  Even  to-day  it  is  obvious 
that  this  strange  contact  presents  to  his  race  the  su 
preme  opportunity  in  its  history.  The  white  man's 
law  stands  about  it  —  not  perfectly  —  but  more  per 
fectly  than  the  law  which  surrounds  any  weaker  race 
at  any  other  point  within  our  world.  The  stronger 
race  may  want  to  kill  the  representative  of  this  weaker 
group,  but  it  cannot  do  so  without  destroying  the  law 
which  is  its  own  protection;  the  white  man  may  want  to 
rob  him,  but  he  cannot  legally  rob  him  without  violence 
to  the  safeguards  of  his  own  gain;  the  white  man  may 
want  to  withhold  from  him  the  securities  of  trial  by 
jury  or  the  benefits  of  legal  process  in  the  courts,  but 


i  THE   INDIVISIBLE   INHERITANCE  n 

the  white  man  cannot  do  so  without  unsettling  to 
his  own  bitter  disadvantage  all  the  fundamental  securi 
ties  of  property  and  life.  Social  disorder  will  always 
have  its  apologists,  but  they  become  a  feebler  and 
feebler  company  as  men  clearly  realize  that  in  their 
own  interest  they  cannot  adequately  preserve  their 
institutions  through  the  processes  of  flouting  them. 
The  law  which  enfolds  the  weak  with  the  strong  be 
comes  a  social  necessity,  rather  than  a  loose  and  vol 
untary  compact.  Its  Saxon  directness,  its  Latin,  im 
perious  universality,  are  elements  in  the  progress  of 
our  administrative  efficiency  which  the  stronger  race, 
however  great  the  burden,  must  increasingly  attain, 
must  attain  in  the  interest  of  its  own  welfare.  It  has 
discovered  —  it  has  always  known  at  its  heart  of  hearts 
—  that  a  civilization  not  responsive  to  its  own  political 
and  social  genius  it  itself  cannot  long  endure. 

And  thus  stands  our  situation  throughout  the  range 
of  our  social  achievement  in  America.  At  every  point 
the  negro  inherits,  receives.  If  public  schools  are 
founded,  he  must  share  in  them,  whether  we  will  or 
no.  He  can  be  denied  only  by  processes  of  deception 
and  self-deception  which  cost  the  stronger  race  a  price 
financially  more  laborious  and  intellectually  more 
stupefying  than  the  burden  of  his  schools;  for  there 
is  neither  economy  of  purse  nor  largeness  and  happi 
ness  of  mind  in  the  presence  and  contact  of  the  semi- 
savage  masses  of  our  new  generations  of  illiterate 
blacks.  It  is  idle  to  talk  of  the  fineness  _  of  the  old- 
time  negro  who  was  illiterate.  He,  and  the  paternalis 
tic  conditions  which  created  him,  are  gone  forever.  W« 
must  train  our  present  negroes  through  the  churches 


12  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  i 

and  the  schools  because  we  have  nothing  else  through 
which  to  train  them.  And  yet,  were  there  no  schools 
at  all,  they  could  not  wholly  be  cut  off  from  their  part 
in  the  inheritance  of  an  educated  world.  Just  as  the 
negro  shares  in  the  uses  of  every  paved  street,  of  every 
well-constructed  country  road,  of  every  railway,  of 
every  public  utility  of  every  sort,  —  facilities  chiefly 
demanded  and  supported  by  the  commerce  and  inter 
course  of  the  stronger  race,  —  so  he  enters  also,  however 
humbly  or  indirectly,  into  the  heritage  of  every  intel 
lectual  and  moral  asset  of  the  country.  If  there  be 
freedom  of  the  press ;  if  there  be  a  press  fit  or  unfit  to 
be  free ;  if  there  be  a  vital  and  spiritual  religion ;  if  there 
be  books,  artists,  poets;  if  there  be  an  historic  and 
responsive  language ;  if  there  be  stable  banks,  equitable 
markets,  courts  accessible  and  for  the  most  part  just; 
physicians,  hospitals,  and  —  by  no  means  least  — 
the  kindly  interest  of  the  wisest  and  kindliest  of  a  more 
highly  developed  population,  —  these  are  the  negro's. 
In  so  far  as  they  are  ours,  they  are  his ;  in  so  far  as  they 
are  not  his,  they  tend,  in  subtle,  inexorable  fashions, 
not  to  be  our  own.  In  the  fundamental  sense  we  can 
no  more  make  a  bi-racial  division  of  our  civilization 
than  we  can  make  a  bi-racial  division  of  the  sunshine, 
the  rain,  the  returning  seasons.  It  is  the  fate  of  the 
land.  It  is  the  tragedy  of  those  long  ago,  North  and 
South,  who  tried  at  its  birth  to  divide  their  labors 
without  dividing  their  liberties.  We  but  confront  the 
fiat  of  reversal.  Labor  and  freedom  are  indivisible. 


THE  PROTEST  OF  OUR  SELF- 
PROTECTION 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PROTEST  OF  OUR   SELF-PROTECTION 

AGAINST  such  a  reading  of  our  conditions  there  has 
been  insistent  protest.  This  protest  has  sprung,  how 
ever,  not  so  much  from  a  reasoned  and  articulate  dissent 
as  from  a  sense  of  popular  revulsion.  The  protest 
has  been  instinctive,  an  emotional  reaction  —  and 
therefore  an  implicit  confession  of  the  unalterable 
fact  to  which  it  stands  related.  We  have  recoiled, 
not  because  the  fact  can  be  denied  but  because  it  must 
be  admitted.  It  is  but  further  recognition  of  that 
solidarity  of  our  institutions,  of  that  indivisibility  of  our 
heritage,  which  is  the  real  basis  of  the  racial  repug 
nancies  arising  within  the  legislative  indirections  of  the 
State  and  in  the  subtler  and  more  powerful  discrimina 
tions  of  social  custom.  If  the  fact  were  not  true  to  us 
and  were  not  accepted  by  us,  it  could  create  neither 
revulsions  nor  reservations. 

We  sometimes  imagine  that  "the  cause  of  the  negro" 
is  being  thrust  upon  us  by  "  the  North,"  or  —  in  a  con 
troversial  sense  —  by  the  negro  himself,  or  by  this  or 
that  political  party;  and  such  an  interpretation  of  our 
contemporary  experience  is  occasionally  true.  But  we 
know,  or  ought  to  know,  that  that  which  really  thrusts 
the  negro  (or  any  other  weaker  factor  in  our  American 
environment)  up  into  the  consciousness  of  the  majority 
is  something  deeper  and  more  inexorable  than  any 
external  power,  —  it  is  the  hidden  and  intimate  hand 

15 


i6  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  our  society  itself;  that  silent,  unyielding  force  of 
civil  equalization  to  which  we  have  committed,  and  have 
everywhere  desired  to  commit,  the  keeping  of  our 
ultimate  ideals  and  of  our  fundamental  institutions. 

And  yet  it  is  inevitable  that  we  should  have  protested 
against  what  many  have  assumed  to  be  its  immediate 
implications.  Indeed,  the  truth  itself  appalled  us; 
and  as  we  contemplated  the  spectacle  of  our  social 
faiths  involved  in  the  test  and  strain,  not  of  the  com 
paratively  homogeneous  people  which  created  them, 
but  of  the  contrasted  populations  to  which  they  are 
committed,  our  repugnances  became  deeper  than  our 
enthusiasms.  We  moved  impulsively  to  the  rescue 
both  of  our  institutions  and  of  ourselves. 

There  is  little  time,  at  the  first,  to  enter  into  an 
ultimate  philosophy.  There  are  no  precedents  to 
guide.  Whatever  may  be  said  as  to  the  intentions  of 
those  who  stood  for  a  mathematical  and  immediate 
realization  of  all  the  literal  implications  of  " equality" 
(as  the  doctrine  fell  from  the  lips  of  Sumner),  whatever 
in  New  England  may  have  been  devoutly  hoped  as  to 
the  political  elevation  of  the  negro  per  saltum  from 
nonentity  to  mastery,  the  South' s  instant  and  supreme 
concern  —  as  she  confronts  the  policies  of  Reconstruc 
tion  —  is  not  with  the  political  education  of  the  negro 
(or  of  anybody  else),  but  with  the  preservation  of  those 
intelligible  and  orderly  conditions  of  our  experience 
which  we  call  civilization.  The  first  duty  of  the  hour 
is  the  preservation,  not  of  this  or  that  institutional 
organization  of  society,  not  even  of  democracy,  but  of 
society  itself.  Doubtless  it  is  in  a  sense  true  that  "the 
way  to  teach  a  man  to  use  the  ballot  is  to  put  the  ballot 


ii        THE  PROTEST  OF  OUR  SELF-PROTECTION        17 

in  his  hands,'7  but  as  applied  to  the  situation  presented 
to  the  South  at  the  close  of  our  Civil  War,  such  a  dec 
laration  is  valid  only  upon  the  theory  that  the  first 
obligation  of  a  democratic  society  is  not  the  preserva 
tion  of  society  or  of  democracy,  but  the  abandonment 
of  both  in  the  interest  of  an  educational  experiment. 
If  it  be  indeed  the  supreme  business  of  the  State  to 
educate  the  incompetent  at  the  expense  of  the  compe 
tent,  and  to  sacrifice  the  political  efficiency  of  the  State 
itself  in  the  interest  of  the  participation  of  the  ineffi 
cient,  then  it  becomes  somewhat  difficult  to  perceive 
just  what  —  even  for  themselves  —  the  inefficient 
have  secured.  For  the  State  itself,  as  an  instrument  of 
social  order,  becomes  impossible.  That  to  which  the 
novitiates  have  been  introduced  is  not  a  realization  of 
freedom,  for  it  is  the  abrogation  of  security;  nor  is  it 
a  participation  in  democracy,  for  there  is  no  govern 
ment  of  the  people  where  government  is  itself  dis 
credited, —  "the  people"  not  being  in  themselves  a 
government  any  more  than  a  mob  is  a  court  or  a  river 
is  a  water-power.  Restraint,  direction,  discipline,  order, 
are  of  the  essence  of  utilization.  There  is  no  tyranny 
so  pitiless  in  its  exploitation  of  the  ignorant  as  that 
government  —  of  whatever  time  or  place  —  through 
which  mere  ignorance  attempts  to  know  and  to  decide, 
and  through  which  the  weak  assume  to  rule.  White 
supremacy  at  this  period  in  the  development  of  the 
South  is  a  necessity  to  the  preservation  of  those  con 
ditions  upon  which  the  progress  of  the  negro  is  itself 
dependent.  Democracy,  as  the  ignorant  masses  of 
our  colored  population  rise  to  seize  it,  goes  to  pieces 
in  their  hands. 


1 8  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

Nor  is  that  in  which  they  are  educated  by  their  suffrage 
the  suffrage  itself;  it  becomes  rather  that  hard  lesson 
in  the  social  and  political  reactions  of  modern  states 
by  which  the  first  prerogative  to  be  formally  bestowed 
is  so  often  the  last  to  be  actually  enjoyed;  for  it  is  as 
true  in  politics  as  in  economics  that  no  man  can  really 
keep  that  which  he  cannot  use.  In  vain  are  military 
forces  brought  to  the  support  of  these  negro  masses 
"to  insure  a  republican  form  of  government,"  for 
it  cannot  be  too  often  pointed  out  that  such  a  policy 
—  involving  in  the  effort  to  protect  one  class,  the 
abandonment  of  republican  conditions  for  all  classes 
-  represents  the  final  catastrophe  of  the  "educational" 
experiment.  In  the  interest  of  the  weak,  in  the  very 
interest  of  all  that  they  may  hope  to  inherit  of  demo 
cratic  institutions,  in  the  interest  of  their  practice  in 
free  government,  government  itself  must  be  freely 
permitted  to  find  its  local  basis,  a  local  leverage  for 
administrative  efficiency  must  be  regained,  the  inter 
ests  and  the  competencies  of  society  must  be  intrusted 
with  its  primary  responsibilities  and  must  be  enlisted 
in  the  support  of  its  processes  and  its  forms.  Not 
until  the  stronger  and  more  practised  manhood  of  the 
local  scene  (whatever  its  imperfections)  was  permitted 
to  assume  its  normal  prerogatives,  could  the  manhood 
of  the  negro  begin  to  have  its  education  and  its  op 
portunity.  For  ultimately,  and  in  such  a  case,  there 
can  be  no  education  in  society  except  society;  no  prac 
tice  in  government  except  through  government  itself. 

There  are  perhaps  those  who  will  retort  that  under 
such  a  contention  human  society,  in  the  beginning, 
could  never  have  been  undertaken:  To  which  I 


ii        THE   PROTEST  OF  OUR  SELF-PROTECTION        19 

would  reply  that  this  is  not  the  beginning.  This  - 
whatever  its  grave  defects  —  is  not  the  era  of  political 
or  institutional  origins.  There  is  a  residuum  of  ac 
complished  achievement,  social  and  governmental; 
nor  may  we  abandon  this  achievement  in  the  interest 
of  those  who  have  not  achieved.  Kenan's  observation  * 
that  "the  loftiness  of  a  civilization  is  usually  in  inverse 
ratio  to  the  number  of  those  who  share  in  it  —  and 
that  the  crowd  pouring  into  cultivated  society  almost 
always  depresses  its  level "  is  but  a  partial  truth,  and 
would  involve,  in  its  implications,  the  rejection  of  democ 
racy  :  the  end  of  society  is  not  the  culture  of  the  few,  the 
end  of  culture  is  the  enlightenment  and  happiness  of 
society.  Upon  the  other  hand,  when  society  allows  the 
inundation  of  its  culture,  when  it  permits  the  hard-won 
gains  of  the  past,  together  with  the  very  instruments  and 
organs  of  social  accumulation,  to  be  submerged  by  the 
morbid  beneficence  of  its  hospitality  to  the  weak,  the 
weak  are  themselves  betrayed,  for  they  cannot  enter 
upon  the  enjoyment  of  that  which  they  have  been  per 
mitted  to  exploit.  The  multitudes  of  the  novitiate 
should  have  their  social  and  political  education;  and 
it  is  in  a  measure  true  that  their  best  instruction  in  the 
suffrage  is  in  its  exercise.  This  exercise  of  the  suffrage 
must  be  so  guarded,  however,  through  gradual  processes 
of  participation,  and  so  bestowed  under  ascending  ap 
proximations  of  influence,  that  the  pupils  in  the  school 
of  society  may  be  effectually  prevented  from  destroy 
ing  the  school.  The  introduction  of  the  politically  in- 

1  Ernest  Renan,  "Religious  History  and  Criticism,"  translation 
by  O.  B.  Frothingham,  New  York,  1864,  p.  325,  on  "Channing  and 
the  Unitarian  Movement  in  the  United  States." 


20  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

capable  will  indeed  develop  their  political  capacity, 
if  this  introduction  be  effected  under  wise  restraints 
and  through  well-adjusted  stages.  So  conducted,  the 
gains  which  result  are  a  real  possession  both  to  the 
novitiate  and  to  the  State.  The  ultimate  end  should 
be  an  increasing  political  assimilation;  not  the  progres 
sive  narrowing  but  the  progressive  broadening  of  the 
basis  of  popular  control.  But  when  the  introduction 
of  the  incapacity  of  the  weak  is  so  precipitate  and  so 
overwhelming  as  to  submerge  the  capacity  of  the  strong, 
then  all  those  rights  of  the  weak  which  their  new  pre 
rogatives  were  intended  to  protect  are  involved  and 
discredited  in  the  common  ruin. 

Human  society  as  it  emerges  above  the  scenes  of 
civil  catastrophe  must,  in  behalf  of  its  very  exist 
ence,  put  the  interests  of  restraint,  of  discipline,  of 
immediate  practicability,  before  the  subtler  interests 
of  individual  recognition.  Such  days  are  the  days  of 
rough  work.  Men  cannot  wait  upon  delicate  and 
difficult  distinctions  as  between  this  personality  and 
that.  Moreover,  if  incapacity  appears  in  the  guise  of 
conspicuous  human  aggregates,  in  multitudes  marked 
off  by  traditional  or  observable  characteristics,  its 
groupings  are  hurriedly  marked  and  its  proscriptions 
are  ruthlessly  imposed.  There  was  doubtless  in  all 
this  some  fear  and  hatred  of  the  negro,  but  there  was 
chiefly  —  as  the  very  necessities  of  the  case  will  in 
dicate  —  a  swift,  intense,  intolerant  repudiation  of 
disorder,  a  demand  for  order,  an  imperious  reaffirma- 
tion  of  government,  an  assumption  and  exercise  of 
fundamental  prerogatives,  —  a  reorganization  of  society 
within  which  the  institutional  experience  of  the  strong 


ii        THE   PROTEST   OF   OUR  SELF-PROTECTION        21 

is  put  at  the  service  of  the  common  progress.  There 
were  wrought  within  this  process  of  readjustment 
certain  social  aversions  and  certain  racial  antipathies, 
but  these  aversions  were  conservative  and  these  an 
tipathies  were  defensive. 


THE  IMPULSE   OF   RACE   AGGRESSION 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  IMPULSE  OF  RACE  AGGRESSION 

BUT  the  times  and  the  conditions  change.  The 
aversions  which  were  so  largely  conservative  have  a 
tendency  to  become  destructive,  and  the  antipathies 
which  were  defensive  become  aggressive.  The  stronger 
race  begins  to  pay  the  tragic  penalty  of  arbitrary  pro 
cesses.  The  rough  and  ready  means  of  social  rehabili 
tation  —  as  they  cease  to  be  the  methods  of  emergency 
-  begin  to  lose  that  dignity  which  the  stress  of  accident 
accorded  them.  The  single  instance  of  fraud,  the  one 
deed  of  violence,  which  were  justified  in  a  struggle 
almost  military  in  its  intensity,  began  to  assume  a  lower 
quality  when  the  end  in  view  was  no  longer  the  saving 
of  the  State  but  the  quite  ordinary  turn  of  partisan 
advantage.  Practices  of  evasion  have  a  tendency  to 
pass  back,  by  subtle  but  inevitable  processes  of  reac 
tion,  into  the  will  and  habit  of  the  authors,  and  the 
bias  of  indirection  slowly  affects  the  whole  body  of  the 
electorate.  Processes  invented  and  tolerated  for  the 
rescue  of  society  against  black  men  began  to  imperil, 
by  their  employment  among  white  men,  the  health  and 
freedom  of  the  society  which  had  been  rescued.  De 
mand  therefore  arose  for  formal  restrictions  of  the  suf 
frage,  restrictions  which  should  save  society  from  the 
curse  of  informal  fraud. 

The  change  was  urged,  moreover,  not  primarily  as 
a  restriction  upon  the  negro,  but  as  a  restriction  of  the 

25 


26  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

factional  advantages  of  certain  white  men,  —  men, 
who,  living  in  the  Black  Belt  and  using  the  actual  negro 
population  as  an  asset,  claimed  their  representation 
in  the  party  counsels  upon  a  basis  proportionate  to  the 
total  theoretic  strength  of  their  respective  counties.  I 
say  "theoretic  strength,"  for  the  negroes  were  no  longer 
voting.  It  was  easier,  however,  to  make  a  campaign 
for  reforms  against  negroes  who  were  not  voting  at  all 
than  against  white  men  who  might  be  voting  both  for 
themselves  and  for  the  negro  also! 

Few  political  movements  in  history  have  been  so  little 
understood  as  this  campaign  at  the  South  for  the  formal 
disfranchisement  of  the  blacks.  Conceived,  first,  as 
a  method  for  freeing  the  stronger  race  from  the  burdens 
of  personal  indirection,  and,  secondly,  as  a  method 
for  the  equalization  of  factional  power  within  the  party, 
it  bore  in  its  origin  only  the  slightest  animus  against 
either  the  negro  or  his  fortunes. 

But  the  habits  of  deception  had  not  been  the  only 
habits  developed  in  the  school  of  our  political  neces 
sities.  The  sources  of  class  suspicion,  of  intense  and 
cumulative  prejudice,  lay  deep,  upon  both  sides, 
within  the  natures  of  these  respective  races,  —  races  so 
different  in  type  and  so  unfortunate  in  every  phase  of 
their  mutual  contact.  That  slavery  qualified  them 
for  the  understanding  of  their  new  situation,  for  par 
ticipation  in  an  intelligent  and  fruitful  knowledge  of  one 
another,  is  true  only  in  a  momentary  sense.  For  its 
own  type  of  peace,  for  its  own  characteristic  amenities 
-  mastery  upon  the  one  side  and  affectionate  depend 
ence  upon  the  other  —  slavery  was  an  adequate  school. 
But  as  a  school  for  freedom,  for  the  mutual  under- 


ill  THE   IMPULSE    OF   RACE   AGGRESSION  27 

standing  and  the  common  forbearances  of  independent 
individuals  or  groups,  it  was  necessarily  inadequate. 
For  the  peace  of  democracy,  slavery  is  not  a  school; 
and  as  time  wore  on,  each  group  came  inevitably  to 
stand  more  and  more  apart,  to  perceive  its  own  inter 
ests,  to  attain  its  own  self-consciousness,  and  to  define 
the  fortunes  of  the  state  in  the  terms  of  its  own  ex 
clusive  welfare. 

It  was  upon  these  central  founts  of  racial  self-con 
sciousness,  deep-stored  through  centuries  of  divergent 
interest  and  conflicting  aspirations,  troubled  through 
the  long  controversy  preceding  our  Civil  War,  by  that 
war  itself,  and  by  the  bitter  injuries  which  followed  it, 
that  there  descended  the  rod  of  our  recent  suffrage 
agitations.  However  meek  the  motive  of  that  rod,  the 
answering  flood  has  not  yet  ceased  to  flow.  The 
social  aversions  which  were,  as  I  have  said,  conservative, 
have  become  increasingly  destructive;  and  the  an 
tipathies  which  had  been  defensive,  become,  under 
the  exigencies  of  factional  strife  and  of  popular  clamor, 
increasingly  aggressive.  The  new  mood  makes  few 
professions  of  conservatism.  It  does  not  claim  to 
be  necessary  to  the  state's  existence.  It  does  not 
presume  to  say  that  society  itself  is  in  abeyance  and 
must  be  restored,  or  that  the  state  is  endangered  by 
the  domination  of  the  ignorant  and  must  be  saved. 
These  new  antipathies  are  not  defensive,  but  assertive 
and  combative ;  this  popular  temper  is  not  in  its  animus 
protective,  protective  of  civilization  in  need  or  of  govern 
ment  in  distress,  but  frankly  and  ruthlessly  destructive. 
Here,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  an  attack  upon  the  weak 
rather  than  an  attempted  rescue  of  the  strong. 


28  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

The  temper  of  such  a  movement  has  found  a  broad 
and  responsive  basis  in  the  masses  of  the  unprivileged 
white  population  of  the  past.1  The  effort  to  exclude 
the  negro  from  the  exercise  of  the  suffrage  has  excluded 
many  of  these  also,  but  many,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
have  been  included.  They  are  by  no  means  the  socially 
and  industrially  "destitute,"  —  "the  poor  white  trash" 
of  our  legendary  fiction,  —  but  the  great  masses  of  a 
sturdy  rural  population;  unprivileged  in  the  sense  that 
they  did  not  fully  share  in  the  slave-owners'  aristocracy 
of  wealth,  but  full  of  that  eager  wit,  that  homely 
force,  and  that  industrial  resiliency  which  have  wrought 
the  South' s  superb  reaction  from  the  catastrophe  of 
arms.  Their  larger  access  to  political  power  has  made 
their  influence  numerically  predominant.  The  very 
struggles  concerning  the  suffrage  have  given  them  a 
political  self-consciousness  which  perhaps  is  more 
assertive  than  that  of  any  other  social  group  in  our 
American  life ;  and  they  have  discovered  —  what  every 
self-conscious  class  is  quick  to  perceive  —  that  the  bal 
lot  is  an  instrument  of  aggression  as  well  as  a  weapon 
of  defence;  a  spear  as  well  as  a  shield.2 

Having  secured  through  its  exercise  the  political 
elimination  of  the  larger  fraction  of  the  weaker  race, 
they  have  proceeded  to  an  attack  upon  practically 
every  privilege  it  possesses.  And  yet  we  must  use  the 
word  "they"  with  careful  reservations.  A  popu 
lation  so  virile,  even  when  drawn  together  by  the  arti- 

1  See  Chapter  I  of  the  author's  "The  Present  South." 

2 1  first  find  the  familiar  metaphor  in  a  quotation  from  Sterne,  in 

"Democracy  and  Liberty,"  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  London  and  New  York, 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1897,  p.  101. 


in  THE   IMPULSE  OF  RACE  AGGRESSION  29 

ficial  solidarity  imposed  by  the  presence  of  an  alien  and 
weaker  group,  is  by  no  means  of  one  mind.  The  whole 
electorate  is,  moreover,  powerfully  influenced  by  a 
minority  —  made  up  of  the  remnant  of  the  older  aris 
tocracy  and  by  many  of  the  representatives  of  our 
professional  and  commercial  classes,  —  a  minority 
powerful  to  restrain  if  not  always  powerful  to  accom 
plish.  Thus  the  movement  of  race  aggression  of 
which  I  have  just  spoken  has  from  point  to  point  been 
modified.  It  represents,  as  yet,  a  characteristic  ten 
dency  of  feeling,  a  natural  and  conspicuous  activity  of 
opinion,  but  not  at  any  point  a  consciously  accepted 
program.  Its  victories  exist,  its  further  victories  are 
inevitable,  but  it  has  suffered  also  its  defeats.  The 
question  as  to  how  largely  and  how  literally  it  shall  be 
permitted  to  establish  itself  in  the  practice  and  legisla 
tion  of  our  Southern  States  is  still  an  open  one;  it  is  a 
question  which  the  future  must  determine.  It  is  a 
movement  which  has  been  checked  at  many  points. 
Many  of  its  apparent  victories  have  been  neutralized 
by  later  action.  Many  of  its  insistent  proposals  are  so 
impracticable  as  to  be  impossible  of  adoption;  many, 
by  significant  majorities  of  the  white  voters  of  the  State, 
have  been  deliberately  rejected. 

And  yet  this  movement  is  among  us.  I  have  already 
dwelt  upon  the  significant  intolerance  of  its  logic  1  as  it 
has  viewed  the  interests  of  our  negro  masses.  Its  more 
radical  spokesmen  have  proceeded  by  easy  stages  from 
an  undiscriminating  attack  upon  the  negro's  ballot  to  a 

1  See  the  paper  on  "  Southern  Leadership  "  in  the  Seivanee  Review, 
January,  1907 ;  to  be  reprinted  in  the  volume  entitled  "Issues,  Southern 
and  National." 


30  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

like  attack  upon  his  schools,  his  labor,  his  life;  —  from 
the  contention  that  no  negro  shall  vote,  to  the  conten 
tions  that  no  negro,  shall  learn,  that  no  negro  shall 
labor,  and  (by  implication)  that  no  negro  shall  live. 
Its  spirit  is  that  of  an  all-absorbing  autocracy  of  race,  an 
animus  of  aggrandizement  which  makes,  in  the  imagina 
tion  of  the  white  man,  an  absolute  identification  of  the 
stronger  race  with  the  very  being  of  the  state,  which 
would  eject  with  a  pathetic  but  intelligible  intolerance 
every  heterogeneous  element  from  the  body  social, 
which  would  include  within  its  expulsive  policies  every 
weaker  group  (for  the  very  forces  at  the  South  which 
would  destroy  the  political  parity  of  the  negro  are  in 
opposition  also  to  the  immigration  of  the  Oriental 
peoples),  and  would  thus  create  a  homogeneous  society 
upon  the  basis  of  homogeneity  of  race.  Weaker  groups, 
if  they  remain  at  all,  remain  to  serve  rather  than  to  share. 
It  is  the  old  effort  to  begin  where  the  land  began,  but  to 
ignore  its  history  and  to  forget  its  sins;  to  erase  its 
tragedies  by  legislative  resolution;  to  attain  the  ends 
of  our  great  adventure  by  force  of  doctrine  rather  than 
through  the  stern  realities  of  experience;  to  repeal, 
indeed,  the  very  force  and  arbitrament  of  Nature. 

For  what  are  the  means  by  which  such  a  conception 
is  to  be  established  ?  Again  we  must  return  to  the  con 
siderations  which  in  the  opening  pages  of  this  volume 
I  have  attempted  to  express.  There  are  some  things 
which  are  not  found  among  the  established  privileges 
of  men.  No  man  may  choose  his  parents,  nor  may  he 
choose  his  native  soil.  He  cannot  remake  his  country's 
past,  nor  alter  the  assumptions  or  the  principles  which 


m  THE   IMPULSE  OF   RACE  AGGRESSION  31 

have  become  his  civil  heritage.  More  important  still, 
he  may  not  put  these  principles  into  operation  upon 
Monday,  repeal  them  or  modify  them  upon  Tuesday, 
and  reimpose  them  upon  Wednesday.  Nor  may  he  at 
the  same  time  apply  them  as  obligations  and  withdraw 
them  as  privileges;  nor  may  he  ever  so  far  forget  the 
divine  inconveniences  of  a  Republic,  as  to  be  able 
securely  to  assume  that  his  indirections  of  administra 
tion  will  automatically  so  operate  as  to  bestow  only  their 
immunities  upon  one  class  and  only  their  penalties  upon 
another. 

The  fundamental  political  constitution  of  a  people 
cannot  be  perpetually  readjusted  between  meals  by 
devices  of  application.  It  cannot  be  so  altered,  from 
instance  to  instance,  as  that  it  may  "hit  the  negro" 
in  one  case  and  in  the  next  may  let  the  white  man  off. 
The  thing  cannot  be  done.  "Accidents"  will  surely 
happen.  The  man  who  declares  boldly  that  we  will 
have  one  law  for  the  white  man  and  another  law  for  the 
negro  would  like  us  to  believe  that  the  only  opposition 
to  his  program  lies  in  the  negro,  or  in  the  "interfer 
ence  of  the  North,"  or  in  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  to 
the  Federal  Constitution.  But  the  real  obstacle  is  some 
where  else.  It  is  in  the  very  nature  of  things;  it  is  in 
the  bone  and  being  of  his  country ;  and  —  little  as  he 
may  at  first  believe  it  —  it  is  in  himself. 

No  American,  North  or  South,  white  or  black  or 
yellow,  wants  that  sort  of  country.  We  know  —  if  we 
know  anything  at  all  —  that  our  own  experience  is, 
somehow,  the  final  authority  against  arbitrary  methods. 
The  processes  by  which  we  may  have  taken  an  oblique 
advantage  of  the  black  man,  whether  in  the  exercise  of 


32  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  suffrage,  or  in  the  support  of  the  public  schools,  or 
in  the  practice  of  the  courts  (even  though  the  extent  of  the 
discrimination  may  have  been  exaggerated  by  a  hostile 
and  external  criticism),  are  processes  by  which  white 
men  have  quickly  learned  to  take  oblique  advantage 
of  one  another.  And  we  also  know  that  what  we  do  is 
an  offence  against  ourselves,  that  we  do  not  like  it,  and 
that  —  from  man  to  man  —  we  say  so.  For  we  know 
that  the  process  by  which  men  have  sometimes 
cheated  the  negro  out  of  his  legitimate  privileges,  as 
these  privileges  are  written  in  our  settled  precedents 
and  our  own  established  laws,  is  a  process  by  which 
they  have  cheated  themselves,  not  infrequently,  out  of 
their  consciences  and  their  peace. 

Moreover,  the  very  institutions  which  our  discrimina 
tions  were  at  first  invented  to  protect  are  soon,  by  the 
increasing  bias  of  these  very  discriminations,  emas 
culated  of  their  proper  power.  If  it  is  hard  to  convict 
a  white  man  of  the  murder  of  a  negro,  it  soon  becomes 
equally  hard  to  convict  him  of  the  murder  of  a  white 
man.  Courts  which  find  themselves  unable  to  punish 
the  crimes  of  a  stronger  class  against  a  weaker  class 
discover  that  the  legal  precedents  and  the  social  habit 
which  have  stood  between  the  strong  and  the  weak  are 
likely  to  stand  at  the  last  between  man  and  man  through 
all  the  classes  of  the  strong.  And  the  failure  to  punish 
means  the  inability  to  protect.  In  any  society,  human 
life  in  general  tends  to  become  as  cheap  as  the  life  of 
its  humblest  representative.  Just  as  in  our  economic 
experience  there  is  a  tendency  of  the  collective  wage  to 
respond  more  quickly  to  the  reward  of  the  poorest 
than  to  the  profit  of  the  richest,  so  under  the  automatic 


in  THE   IMPULSE   OF   RACE   AGGRESSION  33 

adjustments  of  the  forces  of  social  order  the  standard 
of  the  common  safety  has  a  tendency  to  respond  to  the 
type  of  protection  accorded  to  the  weak  rather  than  to 
the  type  of  protection  provided  for  the  strong.  We  are 
all,  upon  the  average,  no  safer  —  so  far  as  our  legal 
status  is  concerned  —  than  the  lowliest  of  our  citizens. 
The  defect  of  law  or  custom  which  gives  immunity  to 
his  murderer  may  give  immunity  to  the  murderer 
of  the  great.  Moreover,  the  twist  of  precedent,  the 
bias  of  opinion  which  may  seem  to  unsettle  only  the 
property  or  liberty  of  the  helpless,  will  at  length  illus 
trate  the  helplessness  of  the  courts  which  permit  the 
traditions  of  discrimination;  for  a  court  which  cannot 
do  justice  except  in  relation  to  a  man's  race  will  soon  find 
justice  impossible  except  in  relation  to  a  man's  wealth, 
or  his  party,  or  his  family.  Such  an  institution  becomes 
an  organ  of  private  convenience  (or  inconvenience) 
rather  than  an  organ  of  social  right,  and  in  those  darker 
hours  of  some  more  general  crisis  which  involve  the 
fundamental  securities  of  the  common  peace,  men  be 
gin  to  understand  —  in  their  despair  —  that  the  equities 
which  have  been  day  by  day  abolished  in  petty  cases 
involving  a  weaker  social  group,  cannot,  upon  the  in 
stant,  be  reassembled  and  reenthroned  for  the  protec 
tion  of  society  as  a  whole. 

Just  as  a  man's  character  in  his  Judgment  Day  will 
respond  in  conformity  with  the  deeds  of  his  spirit  and 
the  pieties  of  his  private  closet,  so  even  the  higher  courts 
of  a  people  will  tend,  automatically,  to  become  ex 
pressive  of  their  fundamental  character.  The  ultimate 
security  of  those  common  rights  which  we  intrust  to  the 
keeping  of  an  incorruptible  but  representative  judiciary 


34  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

are  less  and  less  dependent  for  their  sway  and  efficacy 
upon  single  individuals,  such  as  a  Marshall,  a  Chase,  a 
Taney,  and  are  increasingly  dependent  upon  the  equity 
of  the  social  temper  of  society  as  a  whole.  The  courts, 
especially  under  democratic  institutions,  are  at  last  but 
subordinate  and  expressive  organs  of  our  civilization; 
they  are  its  strongest  and  finest  protection,  —  but  they 
cannot  protect  it  against  itself. 

Thus  the  law  which  does  not  protect  the  weak,  will 
not  —  and  in  the  end  cannot  —  protect  the  strong. 
That  which  our  oblique  processes  and  our  tempera 
mental  discriminations  —  whether  in  the  letter  of  our 
statutes,  the  administration  of  the  police,  the  opinions 
of  the  bench,  or  the  verdicts  of  the  jury  —  must  destroy 
(if  the  zealots  of  race  antipathy  shall  have  their  way), 
is  not  the  negro,  nor  the  white  man  only,  but  society 
itself,  —  society  as  a  sufficient  instrument  of  equitable 
and  profitable  relations  between  man  and  man.  When, 
accordingly,  we  cheat  the  weak  out  of  his  legitimate 
protections,  we  not  only  despoil  ourselves  of  our  con 
sciences  and  our  peace,  but  we  cheat  our  generation 
and  its  children  out  of  the  heritage  of  our  institutions. 
It  is  idle  to  say  that  the  man  who  thus  protests  against 
the  madness  of  some  of  the  forms  of  our  race  antag 
onism  is  "silly  about  the  negro";  he  is  silly  —  if  such 
concern  be  silliness  —  about  his  State  and  its  welfare. 
He  is  struggling  to  save  the  ballot  from  degradation, 
the  courts  from  paralysis,  the  schools  from  the  touch  of 
an  ignorant  and  benumbing  controversy,  our  industries 
from  the  destitution  of  crude  warfare  or  depleting  irri 
tations,  the  law  from  injustices  which  will  blight  the 
wholesome  progress  of  every  class  among  us,  our  society 


in  THE   IMPULSE  OF  RACE  AGGRESSION  35 

itself  from  the  reproach  that  its  rights  are  partial  and 
that  its  efficiencies,  so  far  as  they  may  be  founded  on  its 
evasions,  are  based  upon  the  sands.  If  to  fight  against 
these  things  is  to  fight  for  the  negro,  then  there  are  some 
of  us  who  wish  it  to  be  known  that  we  are  fighting  for 
the  negro. 


THE  INADEQUACY  OF   REPRESSION  AS 
A  POLICY  OF  ULTIMATE  ADJUSTMENT 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    INADEQUACY    OF    REPRESSION    AS    A    POLICY    OF 
ULTIMATE    ADJUSTMENT 

AND  yet  one  must  be  blind  indeed  if  he  fail  to  appreci 
ate  the  instinctive  basis  of  many  of  our  policies  of  re 
pression.  A  strong  man  struggling  upward  under  the 
consciousness  of  submergence  and  suffocation  strikes 
right  and  left  with  little  thought  of  either  principle  or 
policy.  Upon  every  hand,  precipitated  into  the  issues 
of  every  industrial  or  social  movement  are  the  black 
masses  of  a  less  developed  population.  No  one  can 
fully  understand  such  a  situation  except  the  man  who 
has  been  reared  right  in  it ;  and  no  one  can  fully  under 
stand  it,  can  quite  perceive  its  deeper  significance,  its 
profounder  contrasts  with  other  situations,  its  larger 
consequences  to  our  country  as  a  whole,  except  the  man 
who  for  some  definite  period  of  his  life  has  been  com 
pelled  to  live  outside  of  it.  When  the  processes  of  every 
local  institution — the  legislatures,  the  courts,  the  schools, 
—  are  clogged  with  abnormal  masses  of  the  ignorant 
and  the  weak,  and  when  these  are  the  masses  not  simply 
of  a  homogeneous  group,  but  of  an  unassimilable  and 
recently  subject  race,  the  strain  upon  administrative 
capacity  and  upon  the  administrative  conscience  be 
comes  inconceivably  acute;  the  sense  of  social  suffoca 
tion  becomes  almost  unendurable.  Strongly  as  it  may 
protest,  therefore,  against  his  faults  of  temper  or  against 
the  dulness  of  his  insight,  the  modern  world  has,  I  think, 

39 


40  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

far  greater  personal  sympathy  —  upon  the  various 
issues  presented  by  the  negro  —  with  the  intolerant 
extremist  of  the  South  than  with  the  intolerant  extre 
mist  of  New  England.  It  has  been  inclined  to  look 
upon  the  struggle  of  the  South,  thus  far,  as  a  struggle 
for  breath  and  for  time,  an  effort  as  of  one  who,  beating 
back  the  flood  and  shaking  from  his  faculties  the  blind 
ness  and  the  roar  of  ocean,  has  as  yet  been  hardly 
able  to  view  the  land  and  to  take  his  course. 

For  even  the  more  violent  of  the  aggressive  an 
tipathies  upon  which  I  have  already  dwelt  have  had  a 
partially  defensive  meaning.  This  meaning  has  been 
sometimes  perverted,  just  as  normal  social  instincts 
are  often  and  everywhere  perverted,  by  an  ignorant 
and  selfish  leadership;  but  it  has  had  legitimately  a 
double  basis :  a  basis,  partly  traditional,  in  the  struggles 
of  our  earlier  history,  in  the  habits  of  self-protection 
imposed  by  the  policies  of  Reconstruction ;  and  a  basis 
in  our  social  and  racial  fears,  —  our  fears,  not  of  any 
definite  political  domination,  but  of  a  general  en 
croachment  upon  the  white  man's  "blood." 

By  this  the  South  has  meant  something  more  formi 
dable,  however,  than  the  physical  mixtures  of  the  white 
and  negro  strains.  This  it  has  indeed  abhorred,  de 
spite  the  fact  that  its  deeper  instinct  and  its  deliberate 
ideal  have  been  again  and  again  betrayed  (as  is  the  fate 
of  social  ideals  elsewhere)  by  the  base  and  the  irrespon 
sible  of  the  stronger  race.  But  this  mixture  of  the  races 
has  represented  something  more  than  a  physical  catas 
trophe;  to  the  thought  of  the  South  it  has  meant, 
through  the  encroachments  of  one  racial  group  upon 
another,  an  encroachment  of  lower  standards,  of  cruder 


iv  THE   INADEQUACY   OF   REPRESSION  41 

instincts,  of  weaker  will,  —  not  a  reciprocal  jointure 
through  which  the  culture  of  one  human  family 
strikes  hands  with  the  culture  of  another;  through 
which  the  American,  whatever  his  station,  strikes 
hands  with  the  culture  of  England  or  Germany  or 
France ;  —  but  an  alliance  without  an  ally ;  a  jointure 
in  which  the  social  achievement  of  one  side  stands  com 
paratively  at  zero.  The  American  may  thus  unite 
with  the  humQest  Slav,  but  this  Slav  has  his  con 
temporary  heritage  in  the  culture  of  the  Slavonic  peoples, 
its  symbols  in  Prague,  in  Posen,  in  Moscow,  in  St. 
Petersburg.  However  illiterate  or  brutal  the  Slav  may 
be,  his  human  possibilities  have  had  their  established 
demonstration.  The  heights  of  historic,  palpable  achieve 
ment  have  been  forever  won  for  himself  and  for  his 
children.  His  own  problem  therefore  is  chiefly  indi 
vidual.  In  answer  to  a  collective  conquest  which  may 
inspire  him  and  to  which  he  may  respond,  he  has  but 
to  claim  for  himself  an  established  heritage,  already 
devised  and  bequeathed,  in  the  estate  of  the  modern 
world.  The  Japanese,  too,  have  a  culture  (and  by  the 
word  " culture"  I  here  chiefly  mean  a  demonstrated 
social  efficiency)  of  rare  power  and  charm ;  and  even  the 
Chinese  —  poor  and  ignorant  as  are  those  who  chiefly 
visit  us  —  have  such  a  culture  also,  crowned  by  a 
large  and  powerful  aristocracy  of  knowledge,  wealth, 
and  pride. 

But  whereas  the  stronger  race  in  the  United  States 
may  enter  upon  its  accepted  relationships  with  such 
human  groups,  touching  through  their  individuals, 
however  lowly,  the  potential  units  of  a  demonstrated 
social  achievement,  it  merges  with  the  negro  only  upon 


42  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  terms  of  tragic  loss.  The  individual  indeed  may 
get  the  strain  of  genius  from  negro  blood.  The  future 
may  hold  —  and  I  think  does  hold  —  a  noble  and  hap 
pier  promise  for  large  numbers  of  the  negro  race.  I 
speak,  however,  not  of  the  individual  of  to-day  nor 
of  the  many  in  the  future,  but  of  the  collective  and 
established  standards  of  social  reciprocity.  There  are 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  negroes 
in  the  world,  but  there  may  be  found  among  the 
ambassadors  at  Washington  no  representative  of  any 
creditable,  efficient,  self-determining  negro  group  among 
contemporary  peoples.  The  fact  at  the  background  of 
every  Russian,  however  ignorant,  is  contemporary 
Russia,  —  with  its  vast  brutalities,  but  with  its  history, 
its  art,  its  now  conquering  martyrdoms;  the  fact  at  the 
background  of  every  Pole,  however  desolate,  is  con 
temporary  Poland  and  its  undismembered  aspiration  — 
a  nationality  even  without  a  land ; l  the  fact  at  the  back 
ground  of  every  German,  however  stolid,  is  contem 
porary  Germany,  —  of  every  Frenchman,  however 
volatile,  is  contemporary  France:  but  the  fact  at  the 
background  of  every  negro,  however  wise,  or  well 
educated,  or  brave,  or  good,  is  contemporary  Africa. 
At  no  point  in  the  history  of  states  or  in  the  develop 
ment  of  human  families  does  a  demonstration  of  his 
social  capacity  or  of  his  collective  achievement  in  art 
or  letters  or  government  look  out  from  the  familiar 
possibilities  of  his  genius.  In  the  land  where  he  has 
accomplished  most,  his  social  achievement  has  been 
either  denied  upon  the  one  hand  or  bestowed  upon  the 

1  Compare  an  interesting  passage  in  Lord  Acton's  "The  History 
of  Freedom,"  etc.,  Macmillan  &  Co.,  London,  1907,  pp.  205,  206. 


iv  THE   INADEQUACY   OF   REPRESSION  43 

other;  it  has  hardly  been  self-attained ;  and  such  blood 
alliance  as  the  stronger  race  has  made  with  him  it  has 
made  not  through  its  love  and  at  its  altars,  but  through 
its  weaknesses,  and  beyond  the  gateways  of  its  self- 
regard.  The  child  is  the  child  of  the  mother's  house, 
is  born  into  the  negro's  life.  There  are  millions  of 
mulattoes,  but  there  is  no  mulatto  home.1 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  the  hand  which  writes  these 
lines  has  moved  under  any  but  the  tenderest  impulse 
for  the  tragic  fate  of  the  American  of  negro  lineage,  or 

1  That  mulattoes  do  not  intermarry  —  or  that  they  do  not  have 
orderly  and  happy  homes  —  is  not  in  the  least  suggested.  There  is, 
rather,  a  strong  tendency  for  color  to  seek  color,  and  for  the  mulatto 
stock  thus  to  find  normal  and  honorable  perpetuation.  The  phrase 
of  the  text  is  intended  to  point  out,  however,  that  while,  as  to  his  blood, 
the  individual  may  be  divided  between  the  races,  the  home  —  as  a 
social  institution  —  is  not  divided,  but  falls  within  the  life  of  the  one 
race  or  the  other.  While  to  many  it  may  seem  inaccurate  to  call  the 
mulatto  a  negro,  it  is  equally  inaccurate  to  call  him  strictly  white. 
To  create  an  intermediate  classification  as  in  Jamaica,  and  to  divide 
the  population  into  "white,"  "negro,"  and  "colored,"  is  but  to  in 
crease  the  confusions  and  complexities  of  the  problem ;  —  for  there 
thus  arise,  in  fact,  three  groups  instead  of  two,  — the  irritation  between 
the  colored  and  negro  classes  being  often  quite  as  great  as  that  between 
the  negro  and  the  white.  With  this  general  subject  I  am  to  deal 
more  fully  in  "Issues,  Southern  and  National."  In  the  present  dis 
cussion,  and  in  relation  to  the  immediate  questions  of  our  public 
policy,  I  deal  with  the  mulatto  factor  simply  as  a  factor  of  the  negro 
group,  the  mulatto  being  assigned  to  that  group  by  the  public  opinion 
of  both  sections  and  both  races,  and  by  the  general  sentiment  of  the 
mulatto  element  itself.  This  sentiment  is  partially  due  to  the  press 
ure  of  the  feeling  of  the  stronger  race;  but  it  is  due  even  more 
largely  to  the  fact  that  the  child  is  the  child  of  the  mother's  home  — 
forming  its  earliest  social  and  racial  affiliations,  its  first  and  strongest 
bonds  of  interest  and  participation,  with  the  race  into  the  life  of  which 
its  consciousness  awakes.  It  instinctively  claims  the  home  of  its  birth 
as  its  social  basis.  See,  also,  on  the  probable  persistence  of  racial 
divisions,  the  paper  by  Kelly  Miller,  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  to 
which  reference  is  made  on  p.  68. 


44  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

that  in  the  writer's  judgment,  any  human  factor  in  our 
modern  society  is  more  justly  entitled  to  the  fate  of  a 
truer  and  more  generous  comprehension.  If  I  dwell 
upon  it  briefly,  I  do  so  not  because  there  is  so  little  to  be 
said,  but  because  there  is  so  much  that  words  can  never 
say.  And  yet  when  we  clearly  face  the  immediate 
questions  presented  by  the  conservative  antipathies  of 
the  South,  the  kindlier  restrictions  which  —  without 
needless  rancor  or  captious  intolerance  —  have  kept  the 
barriers  against  the  social  encroachment  of  this  weaker 
group,  and  have  so  drawn  the  circle  of  inviolate  seclusion 
about  its  women  that  no  child  of  the  weaker  race  has  ever 
been  born  into  any  home  of  the  stronger,  I  think  we  are 
bound  to  answer  substantially  as  the  South  has  answered. 

Would  it  have  been  well,  upon  the  other  hand,  for  the 
South  to  have  adopted  the  counsel  of  the  extremists  of 
New  England  ?  Would  it  have  been  well  —  not  merely 
in  the  interest  of  the  white  man  but  of  humanity  in  its 
broader  sense  —  for  the  merging  of  these  peoples  to 
have  been  deliberately  contemplated  in  the  policy  of  the 
State  ?  l  The  number  of  those  who  think  that  the  South 
should  have  answered  in  the  affirmative  has  from  year 
to  year,  I  think,  grown  smaller. 

Does  it  then  follow,  it  may  be  asked,  that  people  will 
intermarry  merely  because  marriage  is  legally  per 
mitted,  or  that  those  who  study  in  the  same  schools 
or  who  eat  at  the  same  table  will  necessarily  unite? 
Not  at  all;  yet  in  the  adjustment  of  the  relations  of 
two  great  populations  and  in  first  establishing  the  normal 

1  The  reader  is  also  referred  to  "The  Present  South,"  Chap.  II, 
PP-  34»  35>  36>  and  to  "The  Romanes  Lecture,"  of  1902,  by  James 
Bryce,  LL.D.,  quoted  on  p.  330  of  that  volume. 


iv  THE   INADEQUACY  OF   REPRESSION  45 

association  of  two  huge  and  variant  masses  —  includ 
ing  the  weak,  the  ignorant,  the  vicious  of  both  races  — 
the  policies  of  the  State  and  the  customs  of  society  have 
necessarily  their  educative  function.  Put  upon  the 
defensive  not  merely  by  the  pressure  of  the  negro  popu 
lation  but  by  the  North's  aggressive  alliance  with  the 
negro's  less  wholesome  aspirations,  the  stronger  race 
at  the  South  was  bound  to  intrench  its  protections  with 
all  the  emphasis,  intensity,  and  finality  which  it  could 
command  in  the  laws,  the  customs,  and  in  even  the  more 
trivial  symbols  of  relationship  as  these  have  obtained 
between  group  and  group.  Such  divisions,  viewed 
in  their  larger  meaning,  were  factors  in  the  discipline 
of  multitudes,  forces  of  social  education.  They  marked 
off  the  metes  and  bounds  of  orderly  but  distinct  de 
velopment.  They  were  rough  rules  in  the  schooling 
of  readjustment,  yet  they  were  a  help  to  peace  and  a 
necessity  of  survival.  Confusion,  bewilderment,  were 
everywhere.  It  was  not  a  time  for  parleying.  It  was 
a  time  for  the  directive  force  of  instant,  imperious 
demarcations.  Such  a  policy  may  have  involved,  it 
did  partially  involve,  the  denial  of  compassion  to  a  few; 
but  it  was  the  enactment  of  mercy  for  the  many.  If 
certain  of  its  details  were  debatable,  its  alternative  was 
unthinkable. 

But  the  details  of  any  policy  of  repression  will,  with 
lapse  of  time,  be  increasingly  open  to  debate.  For  the 
policy  of  the  South  which  began  in  a  legitimate  protest 
against  the  repression  of  the  white  man,  which  in  both 
its  defensive  and  its  aggressive  antipathies  represented 
an  instinct  of  self-protection,  has  sometimes  tended  to 


46  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

represent,  at  least  in  the  purpose  of  certain  of  its  spokes 
men,  a  mere  policy  of  repression  toward  the  negro. 
That  repression,  so  long  as  it  seemed  to  be  based  upon 
our  own  necessities  of  self-protection,  was  inevitable. 
But  its  basis,  with  the  passing  of  those  necessities,  is 
slowly  shifting.  No  modern  state,  much  less  a  modern 
democracy,  can  accept  a  policy  of  deliberate  repression 
as  denning  its  permanent  and  essential  relation  toward 
any  racial  or  social  group.  The  details  of  any  such 
proposal  will  necessarily  be  subjected,  therefore,  to 
close  and  rigorous  analysis  —  in  the  interest  of  the  group 
in  question,  in  the  rightful  interest  of  all  the  members 
of  the  stronger  race,  and,  above  all,  in  the  interest 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  To  this  point  I  have  again 
and  again  recurred.  As  the  South  now  emerges  from 
her  period  of  acute  catastrophe,  from  the  abnormal 
conditions  of  industrial  and  political  revolution,  she 
will  necessarily  define  the  status  of  every  faction  or 
element  of  her  people  in  the  terms  of  our  fundamental 
heritage.  She  will  do  so  because  she  will  realize  that 
whenever  the  stronger  race  attempts  to  base  its  relations 
with  the  weaker  race  upon  any  arbitrary  readjustment 
of  our  institutions,  the  wrong  committed  is  a  wrong 
against  the  strong  as  well  as  against  the  weak,  —  a 
compromise  of  their  common  inheritance  for  which 
the  oblique  advantages  of  any  favored  class  can  offer 
no  adequate  compensation. 

But  our  new  necessities  —  what  I  may  call  our 
permanent  emergencies  —  are  not  less  difficult  than 
the  old:  they  are,  perhaps,  even  greater;  for  they  call 
for  larger  patience,  closer  and  clearer  thinking,  and  a 
stouter  will.  It  is  always  easier  to  hold  down  a  man 


iv  THE   INADEQUACY    OF    REPRESSION  47 

whom  you  fear  than  to  achieve  the  mental  acumen  and 
the  moral  steadiness  to  think  out  the  problem  as  to 
how,  after  your  release  of  him,  you  are  to  manage  to 
get  on  with  him.  And  yet  the  release  of  him  is  in 
evitable.  Our  new  necessities  are  more  imperious 
than  his  own.  An  attitude  of  unreasoning  and  per 
manent  repression  is  to  us  more  intolerable  than  to 
the  negro.  We  are  too  busy,  too  much  interested  in 
other  things,  too  eager  for  larger  enterprises  and  freer 
minds,  to  be  consumingly  engaged  in  the  business  of 
keeping  some  one  down.  The  thing,  moreover,  is 
impossible.  Not  only  is  the  negro  growing  stronger, 
but  the  whole  world  will  daily  add  to  his  strength  in 
direct  proportion  to  the  repression  which  he  suffers. 
The  universe  —  like  the  peacemaker  in  the  streets  — 
cannot  hear  our  quarrel  till  the  strong  man  let  the 
weak  man  go.  The  South  will  never  have  its  hearing 
till  the  fury  goes  out  of  certain  eyes  and  the  noise  of 
certain  of  our  public  men  is  stilled.  As  the  world  takes 
the  negro's  part,  as  the  negro  gains  in  strength,  as  the 
South  wearies  of  its  more  morbid  preoccupations,  as 
the  cruder  policies  of  repression  begin  to  tremble  in  the 
rigid  framework  of  their  terms,  the  representatives  of 
our  reactionary  leadership  —  in  the  honest  but  pitiful 
hysteria  of  their  fears  —  would  seek  the  remedy  in 
more  repression,  and  would  attempt  by  the  shrieking 
rancor  of  their  appeals  to  galvanize  into  further  life 
the  old  terrors,  and  to  banish  into  still  fainter  distances 
the  better  angels  of  our  age.  For  a  brief  period  they 
may  prevail.  But  the  South,  as  she  grows  more  con 
fidently  into  the  new  powers  of  her  social  self-posses 
sion,  as  new  supremacies  invite  her  and  a  more  varied 


48  THE    BASIS    OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  iv 

ascendancy  awaits  her,  will  do,  I  think,  that  which 
a  strong  people  at  length  always  succeeds  in  doing. 
In  redefining  her  relations  to  the  negro  she  will,  in 
the  first  place,  put  her  observation  and  her  judgment 
in  control  of  her  prepossessions  —  will  attempt  to  view 
the  facts  and  the  forces  of  our  life  precisely  as  they 
are.  And  in  the  second  place  she  will,  in  learning 
from  those  facts  and  those  forces,  resolve  to  fight  with 
them  and  not  against  them;  will  make  no  war  upon 
the  fundamental  realities  of  the  situation;  will  co 
operate  with  them,  will  take  them  up  into  the  deliberate 
structure  of  her  policies,  knowing  that  in  the  adjust 
ments  of  social  groups  only  the  policies  which  are  so 
based  — •  only  those  which  find  their  justifications  deep 
within  the  truth  of  things  —  which  are  in  alliance  with 
sound  reason,  with  the  equities  of  nature,  with  that 
collective  instinct  of  social  right  which  is  at  length 
appearing  among  mankind,  will  or  can  endure. 


THE    DOUBLE    BASIS    OF    OUR    RACE 
SECURITY 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  DOUBLE  BASIS   OF  OUR  RACE  SECURITY 

SUCH,  at  any  rate,  I  believe  to  be  the  only  ultimate 
ground  for  either  the  policy  or  the  philosophy  of  our 
self-defence.  Much  of  the  instinctive  protest  against 
the  advance  of  the  negro  race  has  been  due  to  the  fear 
that  its  development  would  contribute  to  its  encroach 
ment  upon  the  white  man's  life.  The  leaning  toward 
arbitrary  processes  has  largely  sprung  from  no  direct 
hatred  of  the  negro,  but  from  the  vague  suspicion  that 
unless  burdened  with  peculiar  disabilities  his  progress 
might  oppose  the  progress  of  the  stronger  race.  Many 
have  thus  antagonized  his  education  merely  because 
they  have  seen  in  it  a  peril  to  ourselves.  They  have 
not  cared,  primarily,  to  keep  any  man  in  ignorance; 
they  have  not  personally  desired  the  hopelessness  of 
any  class ;  but  they  have  distrusted  the  bestowal  of  any 
power  upon  this  weaker  group  which  might  strengthen 
its  capacity  for  access  into  the  life  and  destiny  of  the 
stronger. 

Such  an  attitude  may  seem  to  betray  a  lack  of  con 
fidence  upon  the  part  of  the  white  race  in  its  power 
to  meet,  upon  its  own  resources  and  at  any  odds,  the 
encroachment  of  the  black.  Its  alarm  may  seem  at 
first  to  indicate  a  defect  of  essential  pride.  And  yet 
the  explanation  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  imagined  peril 
of  the  situation  is  not  the  mere  peril  of  the  morbid 
interests  of  the  negro,  but  the  peril  which  has  seemed 

5' 


52  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

to  lie  in  the  two  factors  of  that  double  alliance  which 
has  thus  far  operated  to  support  them. 

One  is  the  factor  presented  by  the  vicious  elements 
of  the  stronger  group,  by  its  own  forces  of  irresponsi 
bility  and  vice.  Every  social  aggregate  of  whatever 
sort  carries  within  its  own  number  the  elements  of  its 
possible  self-betrayal.  Much  of  the  South's  talk  against 
the  negro  has  therefore  been  the  South  talking  to  itself; 
has  been  its  rebuke,  by  implication,  of  those  corrupting 
elements  within  the  limits  of  its  own  life  which  answer 
to  no  high  policy  of  social  self-respect,  to  no  fine  pur 
pose  of  racial  conservation,  but  which  under  the  lowest 
impulses  would  degrade  the  present  and  betray  the 
future.  And  the  other  alliance,  the  other  support  of 
the  suspected  peril  of  the  negro,  has  been  from  without, 
from  that  undiscriminating  sentiment  in  his  behalf 
which  has  so  often  seemed  to  govern  the  expressions 
of  our  Northern  States,  States  possessing  for  practically 
two  generations  the  prestige  of  political  and  party 
power.  That  the  North  as  a  whole  would  now  con 
sciously  and  deliberately  attack  the  racial  security  of  the 
South,  I  do  not  believe ;  such  a  suspicion  is  not  usually 
shared  by  those  who  know  the  North  at  first  hand. 
The  fact  is,  however,  that  the  formative  majority  of 
neither  section  can  personally  know  the  masses  of  the 
other,  that  the  greater  number  of  those  living  in  either 
section  must  take  their  impressions,  necessarily,  at  second 
hand,  and  too  often  from  an  unrepresentative  press  and 
from  the  unrepresentative  exponents  of  sectional  or  poli 
tical  controversy.  And  in  view  of  what  through  such 
means  the  Southern  majority  is  permitted  to  know  of 
the  North,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  North,  viewed  in 


v  OUR  RACE  SECURITY  53 

its  political  solidarity  as  a  party  force,  should  be  the 
subject  of  decreasing,  but  still  evident  distrust. 

Yet  as  the  common  and  familiar  attitude  of  the  North 
becomes  less  controversial,  and  as  the  white  South 
gains  stronger  hold  upon  the  weak  and  apostate  ele 
ments  within  its  limits,  the  possibilities  of  encroach 
ment  from  the  side  of  the  weaker  race  are  seen  to  be 
less  formidable  than  has  been  supposed.  It  becomes 
evident,  indeed,  that  the  sound  development  of  the 
negro  —  so  far  from  increasing  the  perils  of  that 
encroachment  —  is  one  of  the  policies  upon  which  the 
South  must  ultimately  depend  for  the  intelligent  and 
permanent  differentiation  of  these  racial  groups. 

Certainly  there  is  no  adequate  or  permanent  defence 
in  a  program  of  indiscriminate  repression.  Such  a 
course  can  only  operate  to  destroy  both  the  instincts 
and  the  interests  around  which  the  solidarity  and  the 
efficiency  of  racial  groups  are  organized.  Indeed,  as 
I  have  elsewhere  said:  — 

"  The  perils  involved  in  the  progress  of  the  negro  are 
as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  perils  invited  by 
his  failure.  And  yet  if  any  race  is  to  live,  it  must  have 
something  to  live  for.  It  will  hardly  cling  with  pride 
to  its  race  integrity  if  its  race  world  is  a  world  wholly 
synonymous  with  deprivation,  and  if  the  world  of  the 
white  man  is  the  only  generous  and  honorable  world 
of  which  it  knows.  It  will  hardly  hold  with  tenacity 
to  its  racial  standpoint,  it  will  hardly  give  any  deep 
spiritual  or  conscious  allegiance  to  its  racial  future,  if 
its  race  life  is  to  be  forever  burdened  with  contempt, 
and  denied  the  larger  possibilities  of  thought  and  effort. 
The  true  hope,  therefore,  of  race  integrity  for  the  negro 


54  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

lies  in  establishing  for  him  the  possibilities  of  a  broader 
social  differentiation  within  his  own  racial  and  social  life. 
"A  race  which  must  ever  be  tempted  to  go  outside 
of  itself  for  any  share  in  the  largeness  and  the  freedom 
of  experience  will  never  be  securely  anchored  in  its  racial 
self-respect,  can  never  achieve  any  legitimate  racial 
standpoint,  and  must  be  perpetually  tempted  —  as 
its  members  rise  —  to  desert  its  own  distinctive  life 
and  its  own  distinctive  service  to  the  world.  There 
is  no  hope  for  a  race  which  begins  by  despising  itself. 
The  winning  of  generic  confidence,  of  a  legitimate 
racial  pride,  will  come  with  the  larger  creation  —  for 
the  capable  —  of  opportunity  within  the  race.  The 
clue  to  racial  integrity  for  the  negro  is  thus  to  be  found, 
not  in  race  suppression,  but  in  race  sufficiency.  For 
the  very  reason  that  the  race,  in  the  apartness  of  its 
social  life,  is  to  work  out  its  destiny  as  the  separate 
member  of  a  larger  group,  it  must  be  accorded  its  own 
leaders  and  thinkers,  its  own  scholars,  artists,  prophets; 
and  while  the  development  of  this  higher  life  may 
come  slowly,  even  blunderingly,  it  is  distinctly  to  be 
welcomed.  As  the  race  comes  to  have  within  itself, 
within  its  own  social  resources,  a  world  that  is  worth 
living  for,  it  will  gain  that  individual  foothold  among 
the  families  of  men  which  will  check  the  despairing 
passion  of  its  self-obliteration;  and  instead  of  the 
temptation  to  abandon  its  place  among  the  races  of 
the  world  it  will  begin  to  claim  its  own  name  and  its 
own  life.  That  is  the  only  real,  the  only  permanent, 
security  of  race  integrity  for  the  negro.  Its  assumption 
is  not  degradation,  but  opportunity."  1 
1  From  the  author's  "The  Present  South,"  Chap.  VIII,  pp.  273,  274. 


v  OUR  RACE  SECURITY  55 

And  such,  in  a  profound  and  inevitable  sense,  is  the 
only  security  for  the  race  integrity  of  the  white  man. 
Two  races,  in  ceaseless  contact  upon  the  same  soil, 
cannot  be  kept  asunder,  upon  any  rational  and  per 
manent  basis  for  their  differentation,  if  we  seek  the 
foundations  for  such  a  basis  in  the  self-respect  of  but 
one  of  the  groups  involved.  Such  a  conception  of  our 
cleavage  may  for  a  brief  period  find  its  security  in  the 
passions  of  war,  or  in  the  immediate  traditions  of  a  poig 
nant  social  readjustment;  but  an  emotional  revulsion  is 
not  a  policy.  Like  the  moods  produced  by  artificial 
stimulation,  the  preservation  of  the  intensity  of  a  social 
antagonism  demands  an  increasing  measure  of  ex 
citation  —  a  demand  which  is  as  futile  in  its  permanent 
accomplishment  as  it  is  damaging  in  its  social  reactions. 
It  is  worse  than  profitless.  In  the  slow  processes  of 
time,  the  powers  of  class  animosity  have  always  proven 
inadequate  for  the  protection  of  the  integrity  of  one 
group  against  the  intrusion  of  another,  unless  the  in 
stincts  of  self-respect  and  of  self-protection  are  pro 
foundly  intrenched  upon  both  sides. 

The  South,  as  I  have  said,  has  made  distinct  prog 
ress  in  its  command  over  the  lower  elements  of  the 
stronger  race.  And  yet  this  stronger  race  unfortunately 
will  never  be  an  absolute  moral  unit.  No  racial  group 
can  ever  wholly  control  its  rebellious  elements.  It 
has  no  power  to  constrain  its  members.  No  matter 
how  resolute  its  collective  purpose  or  how  imperious 
the  dogmatism  of  its  social  creed,  it  cannot  enforce 
this  purpose  or  impose  this  creed  except  in  so  far  as 
its  varied  units  are  responsive  to  its  general  mind. 
It  can  hold  the  obedient.  It  can  do  nothing  with  the 


56  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

lawless,  the  vicious,  the  irresponsible.  Any  human 
society  can  control,  within  approximate  limits,  the 
outward  customs,  the  accepted  fashions,  the  laws,  the 
institutions,  the  daily  business,  and  even  the  average 
ambitions  of  its  personal  units,  but  it  cannot  abolish 
those  forces  of  moral  anarchy  which  lurk  within  the 
shadows  of  them,  the  instincts  of  vice,  of  self-contempt, 
of  sheer  animalism,  or  of  secret  and  deliberate  rebellion 
by  which  every  civilization  is  every  day  flouted  and 
undone.  And  just  so  long  as  there  are  all  about  us 
the  great  masses  of  a  weaker  race  to  which  we  are  in 
part  unwilling  or  in  part  unable  to  open  the  freest  and 
fullest  opportunities  of  self-equipment  and  self-respect 
(the  two  are  fundamentally  inseparable),  these  rebellious 
minorities  of  our  stronger  race  will  extend  their  fusion 
—  the  tragic  fusion  of  white  and  black  —  without  re 
gard  to  the  heritage  they  betray  or  to  the  miseries  they 
promote. 

In  vain  will  men  try  to  increase  the  distance  between 
these  masses  by  louder  outcries  and  ever  fiercer  de 
nunciation  ;  —  such  devices  are  but  a  confession  of  the 
increasing  futility  of  the  whole  program  of  repression. 
They  are  but  the  remedies  of  emergency,  the  expedients 
of  alarm.  They  achieve  nothing.  They  offer  no  basis 
of  relief.  They  afford  no  permanent  security.  They 
announce  no  theory  of  constructive  betterment.  They 
are  but  the  crude  panacea  of  an  itinerant  philosophy, 
living  "from  hand  to  mouth"  on  the  exigencies  or  the 
repugnances  of  the  moment,  and  bankrupt  of  any 
enduring  social  promise. 

The  instinctive  statesmanship  of  our  people  will  ere 
long  suspect  that  the  extremists  of  the  "anti-negro" 


v  OUR   RACE   SECURITY  57 

school  are  thus  shrieking  so  loudly  chiefly  because  they 
have  ceased  to  think.  For  every  failure  of  their  pro 
gram  of  hate  they  have  but  one  remedy  —  more  hate ; 
and  for  every  demonstrated  evil  of  repression  they  have 
but  one  corrective  —  more  repression.  Surely  we  may 
depend  upon  the  South  to  see  that  such  progress  is 
not  progress,  but  retrogression;  and  just  as  Burke  de 
clared  that  no  people  can  be  said  to  be  governed  which 
has  perpetually  to  be  conquered,  so  we  may  remind 
ourselves  that  a  civilization  which  has  constantly  to 
be  abandoned  cannot  be  said  to  be  established.  We 
may,  if  we  will,  seek  the  permanent  adjustment  of  these 
two  races  by  setting  up,  perennially,  a  state  of  war  or 
a  state  of  society.  But  if  we  choose  the  one,  let  us  not 
deceive  ourselves  into  believing  that  we  live  in  the 
enjoyment  of  the  other. 

A  confident,  constructive  policy  of  inter-racial  ad 
justment  is  peculiarly  the  thing  of  which  the  South 
has  need.  We  are  moving  out  of  the  period  in  which 
the  theories  created  in  the  exigencies  of  war  and  of 
Reconstruction  can  be  longer  justified.  To  us  the 
world  looks  for  a  program,  —  a  program  which  can  be 
defended  not  merely  as  the  shrewd  expedient  of  a  pe 
culiar  crisis,  but  as  a  policy  of  permanent  significance 
and  of  fundamental  validity.  And  that,  moreover,  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  deepest  necessity  of  our  self- 
deliverance. 

The  whole  situation  must  be  brought  under  the 
control  of  its  higher  rather  than  its  lower  forces.  It  is 
then  and  only  then  that  the  elementary  principles  of 
such  a  policy  begin  clearly  to  appear.  The  moment 


58  THE  BASIS   OF    ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

we  pause  to  heed  the  deeper  counsels  of  our  better 
moods,  great  formative  generalizations  begin  to  shape 
themselves  about  us,  as  the  friendly  landmarks  of  a 
freer  spiritual  country.  And  yet  it  is  the  same  country. 
It  is  all  the  more  truly  ours,  our  sense  of  possession  is 
only  the  more  happily  secure,  when  we  begin  to  look 
squarely  at  the  immutable  phenomena  in  relation  to 
which  our  habitations  are  henceforth  to  be  reared.  It 
soon  seems  to  be  incredible  to  us  that  any  one  could 
have  ever  hoped  to  rebuild  the  South  as  a  permanent 
institutional  exception  to  all  that  has  been  known  and 
proved  of  human  nature  and  of  human  societies.  It 
becomes  natural  to  seek  the  solid  ground  of  common 
principles.  It  becomes  strange  to  us  that  any  one 
should  ever  have  imagined  that  we  could  promote  the 
self-respect  of  one  race  by  weakening  the  self-respect 
of  the  other.  We  see  that  under  a  situation  of  hourly 
racial  contact  the  symbol  of  race  integrity  is  not  the 
pillar,  rising  upon  its  one  foundation,  but  the  arch. 
We  realize  that,  however  unwelcome  its  implications, 
the  self-respect  of  either  race,  in  the  case  of  two  con 
tiguous  social  groups,  must  have  a  double  basis  —  a 
basis  in  the  self-respect  of  each;  and,  so  far  as  these 
two  groups  within  the  South  are  now  concerned,  we 
come  to  see  —  late  and  perhaps  a  little  sadly  —  that 
there  can  be  no  permanent  basis  for  even  the  very 
conception  of  the  integrity  of  race  which  ignores  the 
factor  presented  by  the  negro  woman.  It  is  at  this 
point  that  the  instincts  and  interests  of  the  negro's 
racial  life  converge;  for  as  with  every  race  and  with 
every  social  group,  the  negro  woman,  implicitly  or 
actually,  is  the  negro  home. 


v  OUR  RACE  SECURITY  59 

It  is  just  here,  however,  through  the  portal  of  this 
negro  home,  and  through  the  frail  defences  of  its 
violated  self-esteem,  that  the  stronger  race  descends 
to  leave  the  legacy  of  its  alien  blood.  It  may  be  that 
the  woman  is  at  fault;  it  may  be  that  she  has  at  times 
preferred  the  child  of  the  white  man's  vice  to  the  child 
of  the  black  man's  love ;  it  may  be  that  she  is  as  shame 
lessly  weak  as  her  most  morbid  detractor  would  de 
scribe  her ;  —  the  fact,  in  whatever  case,  is  clear  —  that 
so  long  as  the  stronger  race  is  powerless  to  control  its 
low  or  rebellious  elements,  the  defences  of  its  segrega 
tion  are  no  stronger  than  the  barrier  of  this  woman's 
self-regard.  The  excluding  partition  between  race 
and  race  is  just  as  weak  as  her  will,  just  as  stable  as  her 
morality.  The  defences  of  her  womanliness  are  the  de 
fences  of  our  race  integrity  —  they  are  but  two  sides 
of  the  same  dividing  wall. 

The  supreme  question  is  not  as  to  our  aversions,  but 
as  to  our  policy.  Shall  we  —  however  prodigious  the 
undertaking  —  touch  her  situation  with  a  constructive 
purpose?  Shall  we  add,  through  the  influences  of  a 
personal  interest  and  the  provisions  of  a  sagacious 
State,  to  the  forces  which  would  hold  her  within  the 
horizons  of  her  weakness  and  her  self-contempt,  or  to 
the  forces  which  would  contribute  to  character  and 
to  womanhood  ?  Needless  to  say,  I  do  not  altogether 
share  the  cynical  opinions  expressed  so  frequently  by 
the  man  in  the  street,  as  to  the  absence  of  standards 
among  negro  women.  There  is  nothing  more  precari 
ous,  whether  viewing  the  society  about  a  throne  or  the 
cattle  upon  a  thousand  hills,  than  the  fate  of  sweeping 
generalizations  upon  the  subject  of  personal  morals. 


60  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

The  primary  condition  of  immorality  among  women  is, 
apparently,  not  simply  race  or  climate,  but  excessive  idle 
ness  —  and  whether  we  observe  the  negro  of  the  tropics, 
the  Eskimo  of  the  Arctic,1  or  the  surfeited  classes  of 
Paris,  London,  or  New  York,  we  find  many  of  the  same 
defects  of  will,  and,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  the  same 
self-destructive  tendencies.  Climate  is,  however,  a 
factor  in  imposing  the  redemptive  necessities  of  labor; 
and  few  human  beings,  in  the  latitudes  with  which 
we  are  familiar,  can  long  escape  their  discipline.  Even 
under  the  conditions  of  contemporary  Africa  —  and 
nothing  can  be  more  superficial  than  to  assume  that 
an  incident  of  life  there  is  the  exact  moral  (or  immoral) 
equivalent  of  the  same  act  under  our  own  complex 
conditions  —  the  fact  of  chief  significance  is  not  that 
the  standards  of  the  negro  woman  are  undeveloped, 
but  that  they  are  varied,  differing  from  locality  to 
locality  and  from  group  to  group.2  They  represent, 
therefore,  no  fixed  depression  of  moral  life,  no  crystalli 
zation  of  abasement,  no  final  arrestment  of  social  or 
personal  development.  They  represent  a  basis  of 
differentiation.  They  exhibit  those  changes  which, 
responsive  to  the  shifting  factors  of  their  environment, 
are  an  earnest  of  further  differences  and  of  still  more 
wholesome  developments.  A  morality  that  can  grow 
at  all  can  go  on  growing.  A  life  that  can  surpass  the 

1  "The  Negro  Races,  A  Sociological  Study,"  by  Jerome  Dowd, 
Vol.  I,  p.  135;  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York,  1908. 

2  Interesting   first-hand   impressions  of   contemporary  Africa  are 
to  be  found  in  the  memorable  narrative  of  the  Alexander-Gosling  Ex 
pedition  ("From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile"),  by  St.  Boyd  Alexander, 
Rifle  Brigade;    1908,  London,  Edward  Arnold;    New  York,  Long 
mans,  Green,  &  Co. 


v  OUR   RACE   SECURITY  61 

level  of  its  immemorial  past  can  surpass  the  levels  of 
the  present. 

That  the  women  of  negro  blood  in  the  United  States 
have  responded  to  the  varied  fortunes  of  their  en 
vironment  in  America,  and  that  their  general  moral 
gains,  in  spite  of  the  larger  number  of  the  weak,  are  as 
considerable  as  they  are  honorable,  is  the  usual  testi 
mony  of  those  who  have  had  real  opportunity  for  the 
accurate  observation  of  negro  life  upon  its  higher  side. 
The  negro  woman  of  the  better  class — because  thrown 
less  frequently  into  industrial  relations  with  the  stronger 
race  —  is  less  well  known  outside  her  own  special  envi 
ronment.  But  the  negro  woman,  whether  of  higher 
or  humbler  station,  is  manifestly  upon  a  moral  level  with 
the  general  development  of  her  people,  and  indeed  —  as 
with  the  women  of  other  races  —  she  is  usually  above  it. 
However  crude  her  standards,  they  are  clearly  in  ad 
vance  of  those  of  negro  men ;  and,  upon  the  whole,  they 
have  moved  definitely  forward  rather  than  backward. 

That  the  moral  inadequacies  of  the  race  are  still 
so  obvious,  may,  to  a  superficial  view,  obscure  the 
significance  of  what  has  been  accomplished;  but  the 
serious  student  of  the  development  of  the  social  ethics 
of  weaker  peoples  will  test  their  relative  advance  not 
solely  by  the  standards  of  other  and  stronger  groups 
but  rather  by  their  own  past  and  in  the  light  of  their 
own  historical  and  social  situation.  At  the  negro's 
ultimate  background  is  not  Europe  nor  New  England 
nor  Virginia,  but  Africa  (if  we  must  sometimes  remem 
ber  it  against  him,  let  us  also  ungrudgingly  remember 
it  in  his  behalf) ;  and  after  Africa,  came  what  ? 


62  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

The  schooling  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  repre 
sented  an  industrial  discipline  conducted  under  the 
most  intelligent  direction  that  has  been  brought  to  bear 
upon  a  lower  social  group;  but  it  was  attended,  as  an 
experiment,  by  tragic  penalties  upon  both  the  more 
efficient  and  the  less  efficient  race.  It  seems  increas 
ingly  evident,  however,  that  the  negro  emerged  from 
that  experience  far  stronger  morally,  intellectually,  and 
industrially  than  when  he  entered  it;  and  the  transi 
tion  to  freedom  meant  a  gain  also. 

But  the  gains  of  freedom  will  necessarily  appear 
slowly,  unevenly,  laboriously.  For,  morally  and  psy 
chologically,  they  have  involved  a  change  in  the  funda 
mental  basis  of  control,  a  transference  of  the  negro's 
character  from  conditions  within  which  the  standards 
of  living  were  largely  superimposed  upon  the  will,  to 
conditions  within  which  the  standards  of  living  must 
be  chiefly  self-imposed.  It  is  the  inauguration  of  an 
era  of  larger  self-direction.  The  shock  of  such  a 
transition  is  profound.  Its  first  effects  within  any  given 
mass  of  human  beings  of  whatever  race  will  naturally 
be  disastrous,  disastrous  not  to  all  but  to  many. 

The  response  upon  the  negro's  part,  his  mental  and 
moral  reaction  under  the  new  conditions,  is  naturally 
all  the  more  disappointing  for  the  reason  that  the  en 
vironment  which  enfolds  him,  the  laws  and  institutions 
which  lie,  as  a  matrix  of  social  character,  about 
his  free  and  unfolding  consciousness  are  those  of  an 
alien  and  wholly  different  group.  The  free  life  into 
which  he  awakes  is  not  his  freedom,  but  another's ;  — 
freedom,  as  expressed  and  organized  through  the  experi 
ence  and  the  institutions  of  another  race.  Liberty  is  forever 


v  OUR   RACE   SECURITY  63 

being  talked  about  as  though  it  were  a  pure  abstraction. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  no  human  meaning  except 
under  its  institutional  expressions.  Its  symbol  is  not 
that  of  a  man  in  a  vast  waste  of  silence  sitting  naked 
beneath  a  solitary  tree.  Its  outer  symbol  is  a  per 
fected  society  itself;  it  is  a  social  achievement  —  not 
a  bauble  strung  upon  a  string  of  beads,  or  a  state  of 
individual  isolation.  Men  create  it  together  or  not  at 
all.  They  cannot  get  it  by  going  upon  a  journey; 
nor  can  they  give  it  away.  They  can  bestow  its  in 
stitutions;  they  can  give  to  others  the  conditions  in 
which  they,  as  free  men,  have  expressed  it;  have  ex 
pressed,  that  is  to  say,  their  consciousness  of  what 
a  free  society  is  to  them;  they  can  give  to  others  those 
forms  of  self-constraint  and  of  self-development  through 
which  their  own  genius  has  conceived  its  destiny  — 
the  terms  of  that  ultimate  Self  which  it  has  toiled  to  be. 
But  they  can,  in  a  fundamental  sense,  give  freedom 
to  no  other  race. 

They  can,  however,  strike  down  the  formal  inhibi 
tions  which  they  themselves  have  imposed  upon  an 
included  group;  they  can  erase  the  limitations  or  the 
discriminations  which  they  have  sought  to  fix  in  the 
terms  of  their  institutions.  They  may  do  so  in  the 
interest  of  the  weaker  race;  they  may  do  so  as  a 
measure  of  rectification  toward  their  own  social  or 
ganization  and  as  a  freer  and  fuller  expression  of  their 
genius,  —  an  act  of  self-conquest  and  self-development. 
That  much  the  stronger  race  may  do,  —  and,  in  the 
interest  of  the  fulness  and  the  significance  of  its  own 
horizons,  must  do,  to  the  last  and  smallest  letter 
of  its  meaning.  But  the  more  intimate  processes  of 


64  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

emancipation  we   cannot  bestow.     These,   under   the 
very  necessities  of  the  case  and  in  the  interest  of  the 
negro's  own  security,   must  be  self-chosen   and    self- 
accomplished. 
His  failures  will  at  first  be  manifest.1    How  soon  or 

1  Yet  the  familiar  assumption  that,  in  the  relations  of  a  weaker  to 
a  stronger  social  group,  the  power  of  survival  is  necessarily  dependent 
upon  the  power  to  compete,  must  be  seriously  modified.  The  greater 
the  complexity  and  variety  of  a  social  or  industrial  situation,  the  larger 
the  opportunities  for  adaptation  and  readjustment.  Certain  members 
of  the  weaker  group  may  be  displaced  at  some  points,  but  they  are 
often  found  to  reappear  at  others.  To  assume  that  every  negro 
barber  who  disappears  from  the  industrial  situation  as  a  barber 
becomes,  necessarily,  a  criminal  or  a  derelict,  is  to  go  beyond  the 
evidence.  It  is  true  that  the  competitive  elimination  of  this  or  that 
negro  from  a  traditional  calling  may  mean  "failure";  but  it  may  also 
mean  success;  —  for  the  negro  in  question  may  have  been  driven,  as 
in  instances  which  I  have  known,  into  other  and  better  forms  of  work. 

If  the  man  who  "disappears"  as  a  barber  reappears  as  a  carpenter, 
or  as  a  small  farmer  on  his  own  land,  he  may  figure  in  the  census 
tables  to  prove  all  sorts  of  dismal  theories;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  has  been  forced  into  a  sounder  and  stronger  economic  position. 
Many  of  the  negroes  are  suffering  displacement  without  gaining  by 
the  process.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  displacement,  in 
itself,  is  always  an  evidence  of  industrial  defeat. 

Nor  is  defeat  necessarily  an  evidence  of  imminent  destruction, 
individual  or  social.  Nature  is  always  upbuilding  its  successes,  but 
it  is  also  endlessly  patient  of  its  laggards.  Society  rewards  its  victors, 
but  the  sagacity  with  which  it  does  so  does  not  surpass  the  sagacity 
with  which  it  is  ever  creating  and  re-creating  the  social  wealth  of  the 
world  out  of  the  toil  of  the  multitudes  of  the  unconquering.  It  is  a 
mistake  to  assume  that  society  cannot  and  does  not  utilize  its  weaker 
ndustrial  factors.  Within  its  complex  and  varied  organization  are 
innumerable  opportunites  of  adaptation  and  readjustment. 

The  individual  in  human  society  who  cannot  "compete"  in  one 
situation,  learns  slowly  and  perhaps  painfully  to  take  up  his  position 
at  another.  There  are  respects  in  which  a  grown  man,  through 
physical  disability,  may  not  be  able  to  compete  with  the  child.  If 
so,  he  does  not  seek  his  economic  foothold  through  his  physical  func- 


v  OUR  RACE   SECURITY  65 

how  largely  he  can  overcome  them  no  man  can  say. 
One  who  appeals  for  the  wisdom  and  validity  of  funda 
mental  policies  is  not  therefore  bound  to  defend  the 
crude  anticipations  of  an  easy  optimism.  But  it  may 
be  well  to  remember,  as  to  all  our  social  policies,  that 

tions ;  he  chooses  the  basis  of  his  competition  in  conformity  with  powers 
which  he  has,  rather  than  in  conformity  with  powers  he  has  not.  This, 
indeed,  is  but  a  further  development  of  the  principle  of  the  division 
of  labor.  It  has  never  been  so  fully  recognized  or  so  profoundly 
operative  as  under  the  ramifications  and  complexities  of  modern 
society.  The  men  who  attempt  to  meet  all  other  men  on  all  grounds, 
are  fewer  in  number  than  ever;  —  there  were  never  very  many !  And 
while  the  untried  and  the  uneducated  are  especially  disadvantaged 
as  to  the  conscious  control  of  their  adaptations  to  the  economic  organi 
zation  (that  is  one  of  the  disabilities  which  a  true  education  should 
partially  correct),  yet  even  where  the  factor  of  voluntary  choice  is  at 
its  lowest,  there  is  secured  from  the  reaction  of  the  industrial  market 
in  relation  to  the  laborer,  a  more  or  less  automatic  adjustment  of 
supply  to  demand,  of  specific  work  to  the  specific  capacities  of  the 
individual.  This,  within  its  lower  stages,  and  in  relation  to  untrained 
masses,  is  relatively  crude  and  ineffective;  but  in  the  mere  fact  that  the 
best  dirt-digger  is  not  put  into  competition  with  the  best  spike-driver, 
but  is  put  to  digging  dirt,  we  have  at  least  a  partial  illustration  of  those 
adaptations  of  capacity  to  labor  that  are  found  in  increasing  variety 
and  efficacy  through  all  the  higher  ranges  of  industrial  effort. 

That  the  negro  just  now  is  finding  many  points  in  our  industrial 
organization  at  which  he  cannot  "compete"  with  the  white  man,  is 
true.  But  individually  and  racially  the  power  to  survive  depends  less 
upon  the  capacity  for  competition  than  upon  the  capacity  for  adapta 
tion  ;  not  so  much  on  the  power  to  meet  competition  as  on  the 
power  (in  no  dishonorable  sense)  to  avoid  it,  to  fit  through  new  ways 
into  the  new  scene,  to  find  a  foothold  upon  the  open  land  till  more 
varied  industrial  aptitudes  may  have  time  for  more  adequate  develop 
ment,  —  or  to  find  certain  special  functions  in  our  organization  which 
the  negro  has  the  capacity  and  may  win  the  opportunity  to  discharge. 

Such  adaptations  are  sought,  necessarily,  by  every  group  entering 
upon  new  industrial  conditions.  That  there  will  be  much  loss  and 
failure,  and  some  pain,  in  the  working  out  of  the  whole  process  of  the 
negro's  readaptation  to  American  life  is  altogether  probable.  But 


66  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

a  program  is  not  necessarily  sound  in  proportion  to  its 
cynicism.  I  do  not  know  how  quickly  or  how  generally 
the  negro  race  in  the  United  States,  responding  to  the 
moral  necessities  of  its  position,  will  choose  a  life  of 
more  deliberate  self-control ;  but  no  man  can  rise  from 
a  careful  study  of  social  and  economic  conditions  in 
Africa  to-day  without  perceiving  that  here  in  America 
the  leaven  of  a  higher  social  consciousness  has  begun 
to  work,  and  that  deep  within  the  masses  of  this  strangely 
different  race  —  however  unconsciously  or  imper 
fectly  —  the  great  decision  has  been  made.  The  race 
may  at  certain  points  fall  back  below  the  level  which 
it  attained,  artificially,  in  bondage.  All  that  was 
artificial  will  naturally  fail  and  pass.  But  however 
this  may  be,  the  distance  between  the  average  life  of  the 
race  in  the  United  States  and  the  average  life  of  the 
race  in  contemporary  Africa  is  so  overwhelmingly 

that  such  contingencies  and  catastrophes  indicate  the  early  extinction 
of  the  race,  or  need  be  taken  as  abnormally  discouraging,  I  do  not 
believe.  It  is  well  to  remind  ourselves  in  this  year  of  the  Darwin 
"centenary"  that  "the  survival  of  the  fittest"  does  not  necessarily 
involve  the  extinction  of  the  relatively  unfit.  Otherwise,  there  would 
be  few  species  now  in  existence  on  any  soil.  Of  the  relatively 
unfit,  Nature  is  benignly  indulgent,  immeasurably  prodigal.  But 
for  that  fact  many  of  us,  whether  regarded  as  individuals  or  as  groups, 
would  not  be  here  to-day.  Yet  "there  is  room  enough  and  to  spare." 
We  are  not  shut  up  in  a  little  walled  prison  with  only  one  foot  of 
ground  to  till,  and  a  single  loaf  to  fight  over  and  devour.  It  is  a  big 
world.  And  the  power  of  food  production  per  each  individual  upon 
our  planet  is  yearly  greater,  and  increases  far  faster  than  its  population. 
The  racial  or  social  group  which  will  squarely  put  itself  into  relation 
with  realities,  which  will  conserve  and  give  its  life  and  seek  first  its 
own  fitness  of  character  and  its  own  power  to  produce,  will  one  day 
discover  that  the  world  has  more  work  than  workers,  and  that  the 
competition  between  jobs  to  secure  a  man  is  to  be  much  fiercer  in  it 
henceforth  than  the  competition  between  men  to  find  a  job. 


v  OUR  RACE  SECURITY  67 

evident  that  the  progress  of  these  people  during  their 
three  hundred  years  upon  our  soil  becomes  one  of  the 
most  astonishing  achievements  in  the  history  of  the 
Republic.  The  standard  of  comparison  for  the  Ameri 
can  negro  should  be  the  African  negro,  not  the  American 
white  man.  There  are  many  who  read  the  current 
records  of  the  "dark  continent"  with  no  thought  except 
to  trace  the  lines  of  weakness,  in  the  terms  of  identity, 
from  that  land  to  this;  it  is  also  open  to  us  to  trace 
them  in  the  terms  of  contrast.  It  is  a  contrast  full  of 
vivid  interest.  Instead  of  depreciating  its  significance, 
no  Southern  man  —  remembering  that  the  period  of 
greatest  advance  was  within  the  period  of  slavery,  and 
that  the  South,  within  the  period  of  emancipation, 
has  been  the  local  environment  of  the  race  —  can  well 
fail  to  record  it  as  among  the  occasions  of  his  pride. 
He  will  not  forget  it,  though  he  still  find  upon  every 
hand  many  of  the  signs  of  moral  catastrophe  and  social 
helplessness. 

A  race  which  fails  is  not  bankrupt  if  it  be  also  a  race 
which  succeeds.  It  is  idle  for  us  to  speculate  as  to  this 
or  that  contingency  which  did  not  occur,  or  as  to  this 
or  that  contingency  which  cannot  arise:  we  are  face 
to  face  upon  the  same  soil  with  eight  millions  of  negroes. 

All  that  can  be  done  to  decrease  the  margin  of  their 
failures  and  to  increase  the  margin  of  their  successes 
we  will  do  in  their  interest  and  in  our  own  —  if  their 
failures  are  indeed  a  menace  to  them,  to  us,  and  to  our 
institutions.  We  cannot  choose  for  them,  but  we  can 
offer  them  something  better  than  despair  to  choose; 
we  cannot  build  their  righteousness,  but  we  can  do 


68  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

much  to  increase  its  inspirations;  we  cannot  achieve 
for  them  the  self-restraints,  the  peace,  the  wholesome 
securities  of  a  racial  or  personal  self-respect,  but  we 
can  refrain  from  making  it  impossible :  indeed,  we  may 
look  abroad  to  find  it,  may  watch  with  an  affectionate 
solicitude  for  its  delayed  appearing,  may  do  all  that 
others  can  to  give  it  solidity  and  truth,  may  rejoice 
in  the  slow  rise  of  its  dim  proportions  above  the  ooze 
and  drift  of  long  and  unstable  savagery,  knowing  that  the 
rough  stone  of  this  foundation  —  waiting  within  the 
shadow  of  our  common  humiliations  —  is  the  other 
half  of  the  double  basis  of  our  own  integrity  of  race, 
the  missing  support  of  the  uncompleted  arch. 

Let  no  one  press  the  illustration  or  its  phrases  to 
literal  and  strained  conclusions.  The  support  is  not 
wholly  missing.1  It  in  a  measure  now  exists.  Nor 
will  it  ever  be  wholly  found;  for  its  existence  will  be 
always  incomplete,  just  as  on  the  side  of  the  stronger 
race,  also,  there  will  be  the  story  of  recurrent  failure. 
But  the  great  social  differentiations  of  history,  the  cumu 
lative  divisions  and  demarcations  of  racial  life,  rise  — 

1  One  of  the  ablest  and  most  representative  of  negro  thinkers, 
while  protesting  against  such  an  interpretation  of  the  denial  of 
"  social  equality  "  as  would  involve  the  surrender  of  civil  and  politi 
cal  rights,  has  said,  "The  charge  that  the  educated  negro  is  in 
quest  of  social  affiliation  with  the  whites  is  absurdly  untrue.  House 
hold  intercourse  and  domestic  familiarity  are  essentially  questions  of 
personal  privilege.  The  negro  is  building  up  his  own  society  upon 
character,  culture,  and  the  nice  amenities  of  life,  and  can  find  ample 
social  satisfactions  within  the  limits  of  his  own  race."  —  "Race  Ad 
justment,"  by  Kelly  Miller,  Professor  of  Mathematics  in  Howard 
University,  Washington,  D.C.,  p.  116;  The  Neale  Publishing  Co., 
New  York,  1908.  Booker  T.  Washington's  essential  sympathy  with 
this  position  is  generally  known.  See  also  Professor  Miller's  article, 
"The  Ultimate  Race  Problem,"  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1908. 


v  OUR  RACE  SECURITY  69 

as  will  rise  the  free  integrities  of  these  groups  here  — 
in  spite  of  incidental  pauses  and  occasional  catastrophe. 
Their  tragic  or  ignoble  fusions  will  slowly  cease.  The 
individuality  of  each  will  come  to  clearer  and  larger 
power.  Such  at  least  will  be  the  tendency  of  every 
guarantee  accorded  to  the  negro's  elementary  liberties, 
of  every  protection  thrown  about  his  property,  of  every 
legitimate  satisfaction  opened  to  his  awakening  man 
hood,  of  every  wholesome  opportunity  through  which 
he  can  found  and  equip  and  enrich  the  sufficiency  of 
his  own  life;  of  every  security  that  can  be  accorded  to 
the  character  of  the  negro  woman  and  the  stability  of 
the  negro  home.  This  way  lies  the  citadel  of  the 
negro's  personal  and  racial  self-respect,  of  his  generic 
pride,  of  his  social  individuality.  And  this  citadel  — 
because  the  greater  millions  of  a  stronger  group  cannot 
control  their  own  rebellious  elements  —  is  a  forgotten 
fortress  of  our  own  stability  of  race. 


NEGRO   RACE    INTEGRITY:    THE 
SCHOOL  OF   SELF-DISCOVERY 


CHAPTER  VI 

NEGRO    RACE    INTEGRITY:     THE    SCHOOL    OF    SELF- 
DISCOVERY 


"Bin:,"  it  will  be  asked,  "is  not  opportunity  the  gate 
of  culture?  Will  not  security  and  culture  increase  the 
powers  and  attractions  of  the  negro  race?  Will  not 
these  powers  and  attractions  develop  within  that  race  a 
greater  longing  for  assimilation  with  the  stronger;  and 
will  not  such  advantages  so  operate,  in  their  direct  in 
fluence  upon  the  stronger  race,  as  to  reduce  its  dis 
inclination  for  union  with  the  weaker?  Will  not  the 
increasing  development  of  the  weaker  race  create  the 
social  leverage  of  a  powerful,  cultivated  class,  and 
invite  the  very  argument  for  a  defensible  amalgamation 
with  the  negro  which  we  found  to  be  possible  in  reference 
to  other  national  and  racial  groups?" 

Such  contentions  have  been  too  widely  prevalent  to 
make  it  either  possible  or  desirable  to  deny  their  ap 
parent  force.  They  have  formed  the  essential  ground, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  of  some  of  the  coopera 
tion  accorded  to  the  negro  at  the  North,  and  of  much  of 
the  antagonism  which  has  opposed  the  negro  at  the 
South.  Within  the  race  itself  such  considerations  have 
had  their  advocates.  Its  familiar  masses  are  as  yet 
unsettled  as  to  any  clear  perception  of  their  racial 
destiny;  the  majority  of  their  leaders  —  as  I  shall 

73 


74  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

indicate  more  fully  in  a  later  paragraph  —  are  turning, 
rather,  to  a  policy  of  self-respecting  segregation ;  but  here 
and  there  is  to  be  found  a  negro  writer  (usually  more 
than  four-fifths  white)  who  distinctly  proclaims  a  policy 
of  progress  as  the  basis  of  a  policy  of  ultimate  amalga 
mation.  It  is  significant,  however,  that  this  conception 
of  the  negro's  future  assumes  a  larger  place  in  the  fears 
of  certain  elements  of  the  white  population  at  the  South, 
and  in  the  hopes  of  a  small  white  minority  at  the  North, 
than  in  the  thought  and  aspiration  of  the  dominant 
majority  of  our  intelligent  negroes.  They  themselves, 
as  we  shall  see,  are  entertaining  a  somewhat  different 
theory.  They  are  less  and  less  inclined  to  sink  their 
destiny  in  that  of  another  race. 

For  the  broad  outstanding  fact  is  meeting  us  on  every 
hand  —  the  fact  that  the  fusion  of  black  with  white  is 
occurring  at  the  lower  rather  than  at  the  higher  levels. 
No  theoretic  apprehension  as  to  the  tendencies  of  negro 
progress  should  be  permitted  to  obscure  the  significance 
of  this  concrete  situation,  inasmuch  as  the  chief  factor  in 
every  problem  is  the  thing  as  it  is.  Nor  is  this  a  mere 
temporary  or  incidental  phase  of  our  American  situation. 
Races,  nationalities,  social  groups  of  practically  every 
description  betray  the  tendencies  of  coalescence  not 
at  the  top  but  at  the  bottom.  An  "aristocracy"  is  al 
ways  an  integrating  force.  The  development  of  a  higher 
class  creates  a  centre  of  social  organization,  a  basis  of 
differentiation,  a  rallying  point  of  common  hopes.  It 
arrests  disintegration  and  establishes  a  basis  of  racial 
confidence  and  of  enduring  racial  life. 

It  is  altogether  probable  that  as  the  years  pass  into 
the  decades,  and  the  decades  into  generations,  there  will 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  75 

continue  to  be  rare  instances  of  intermarriage  between 
members  of  the  white  and  the  negro  races.  This  does 
not  constitute  "the  intermarriage  of  the  races"  any  more 
than  the  occasional  union  of  two  individuals  of  different 
nationalities  would  constitute  "the  intermarriage  of  the 
nations."  It  is  likely,  also,  that  —  if  viewed  literally 
rather  than  relatively  —  there  will  be  more  intermarriage 
than  there  is  to-day.  If  viewed  relatively,  however,  - 
that  is  to  say,  in  reference  to  the  increasing  numbers 
of  each  racial  mass,  —  there  will  probably  be  less.1 

We  should  also  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  inter 
marriage  of  a  small  number  of  individuals,  however 
undesirable  to  the  intelligent  majority  of  both  races, 
would  not  constitute  a  process  of  "amalgamation"  any 
more  than  the  occasional  intermarriage  of  French  and 
German,  or  of  the  American  and  the  Slav  would  con 
stitute  the  amalgamation  of  their  respective  groups. 

1  This  is  the  present  tendency  even  in  such  an  environment  as  the 
city  of  Boston.  Such  intermarriages  as  exist  are  largely  cases  of 
intermarriage  between  those  who  are  so  low  in  the  social  scale  as  to 
represent  no  characteristic  attitude  or  tendency  of  either  race,  and  even 
these  have  steadily  decreased  in  number.  See  "Following  the  Color 
Line,"  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  p.  172,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co., 
1908.  Mr.  Baker  gives  the  total  of  mixed  marriages  from  the  Registry 
Department  of  the  City  of  Boston,  as  35  for  1900;  29  for  1903;  19 
for  1905 ;  —  this  in  a  city  of  more  than  a  half  million  inhabitants. 
"Such  couples  "  says  another  authority,  "are  usually  absorbed  by  the 
negro  race,  although  if  they  belong  to  the  more  educated  class,  they 
enter  into  natural  relations  with  neither  race."  ...  "  Barred  out 
from  the  society  he  most  admires,  his  mimicry  only  excites  mirth,  and 
when  he  touches  the  white  race  on  the  grounds  of  social  equality, 
it  is  the  meeting  of  outcast  with  outcast."  —  See  pp.  60  and  148,  of 
"Americans  in  Process,"  a  settlement  study  of  the  North  and  West 
Ends,  Boston,  by  residents  and  associates  of  the  South  End  Settle 
ment  House,  edited  by  Robert  A.  Woods;  Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin 
and  Company,  1902. 


76  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

For  intermarriage,  upon  a  limited  scale,  is  one  thing, 
and  amalgamation  —  the  gradual  absorption  and  ulti 
mate  disappearance  of  a  weaker  social  group  —  is 
quite  another.  Indeed,  in  the  larger  history  of  societies 
they  have  usually  represented  opposing  and  conflicting 
tendencies. 

While,  moreover,  it  is  true  that  certain  instances  of 
intermarriage  may  occur  in  the  history  of  our  race 
contact  in  America,  it  is  equally  obvious  that  —  in 
any  event,  with  or  without  a  personal  or  social  culture 
on  the  negro's  part  —  such  instances  will  at  rare  inter 
vals  arise.  They  are  arising  to-day.  They  can  never  be 
wholly  prevented;  but  the  impression  that  the  develop 
ment  of  the  negro  race,  its  enlarging  efficiency  and 
intelligence,  will  in  itself  add  to  the  frequency  of  inter 
marriage,  or  will  itself  increase  the  impulses  of  racial 
fusion,  is,  so  far  as  one  can  now  determine,  totally  un 
founded. 

Indeed,  the  tendencies  toward  actual  intermarriage 
in  any  two  racial  groups  are  never  strong,  and  they 
usually  decrease  in  proportion  to  the  nature  and  the 
degree  of  the  differences  to  be  "overcome."  The  de 
gree  of  unlikeness  marks  the  depth  and  persistency  of 
the  division.  While  the  American  may  occasionally 
intermarry  with  human  families  such  as  the  Russian  or 
the  Pole,  or  even  with  the  Turk,  he  usually  does  not; 
for  the  normal  disinclination  upon  each  side  has  a 
natural  basis  in  their  varying  or  divergent  cultures. 
The  negro  in  America  has,  outwardly  and  consciously, 
no  conflicting  culture.  He  has  accepted,  in  one  sense, 
the  peculiar  culture  of  the  land,  and  he  has  been  in 
cluded  locally  and  politically  within  the  same  state. 


vi  NEGRO   RACE  INTEGRITY  77 

So,  also,  has  the  Jew.  But  the  fundamental  culture  of 
the  Jew,  that  which  draws  him  from  the  deeps  of  his 
nature  and  from  the  associations  of  his  past,  is  Hebraic 
rather  than  English  —  is  an  older  and  more  intimate 
possession  than  our  own.  Between  himself  and  the 
Gentile  there  is  thus  little  intermixture  or  intermarriage, 
the  instinctive  disinclination  operating  from  his  side 
perhaps  more  powerfully  than  from  ours.  The  negro, 
too,  though  included  locally  and  politically  within 
our  life,  has  accepted  our  culture  —  so  far  as  he  has 
done  so  at  all  —  only  in  u~secondary~  sense.  For  it  is 
inevitable  that  fundamentally  he  should  continue  to  be 
more  Ethiopian  than  Caucasian,  —  more  African  than 
English  or  Latin  or  Celt  or  Teuton.1 

1  It  is  sometimes  assumed  from  quite  different  standpoints  that  the 
full  development  of  the  negro  race,  its  highest  life,  and  its  enjoyment 
of  the  normal  "rights"  of  a  democracy,  must  involve  the  breaking  up 
of  its  racial  distinctness  and  the  abandonment  of  its  social  segregation. 
That  this  is  not  the  case  is  evident  from  the  relations  of  the  Gentile 
and  the  Jew.  The  Jew  does  not  "degrade"  the  Gentile  or  destroy 
any  "right"  to  which  the  Gentile  is  entitled  when  he  carefully  guards 
the  conditions  of  intermarriage  and  excludes  the  Gentile  from  his 
table.  Nor  is  the  Jew  conscious  of  political  or  social  injury  should 
the  Gentile  accept  from  his  own  side,  also,  the  canons  of  a  voluntary 
segregation.  The  parallel  is  not  literal  nor  complete ;  yet  it  is  suffi 
ciently  suggestive  to  indicate  that  there  is  much  difference  between 
the  instinctive  segregation  of  various  groups  and  a  barrier  of  political 
and  social  degradation.  The  highest  development  of  the  black  and 
the  white  races  on  American  soil  need  involve  no  necessary  surrender 
of  any  legitimate  or  social  "right"  of  the  weaker,  nor  any  necessary  in 
vasion  of  any  legitimate  political  or  social  "  right "  of  the  stronger. 
For  upon  all  questions  touching  the  domestic  and  racial  integrity  of 
social  groups  (as  both  races  may  well  remember)  the  issues  presented 
by  the  injury  of  invasion  are  quite  as  serious  as  those  which  are 
popularly  associated  with  the  injuries  of  exclusion.  Indeed,  in 
America,  we  have  been  morbidly  overconscious  of  the  injuries  of 
exclusion,  and  have  thought  too  little,  of  late,  concerning  the  injuries 


78  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

In  the  cosmopolitan  sense  he  has  drawn  much  from 
us  —  and  will  draw  still  more  as  the  years  go  by ;  just 
as  he  will  also  draw,  through  an  enlarging  mind,  from 
every  rich  or  liberalizing  force,  whether  English  or 
German  or  French  or  Japanese.  It  is  altogether  likely 
that  he  will  learn  in  every  school,  and  in  every  school 
gain  something  from  and  for  humanity.  But  also  in 
the  interest  of  humanity,  as  well  as  in  his  own  interest, 
the  basis  of  his  more  fundamental  culture  will  be  natu 
rally  his  own.  It  will  take  its  more  intimate  force  and 
quality  from  the  depths  in  him  which  are  deeper  than 
the  depths  of  his  life  here,  which  reach  back  to  the  store 
of  those  fathomless  years  in  comparison  with  which  the 
period  of  his  existence  on  this  soil  is  but  a  single  hour. 
It  is  a  culture  which  may  offer  him  as  yet  no  established 
heritage,  no  accomplished  treasury  of  letters  or  art  or 
science  or  commerce,  —  as  these  are  known  within  the 
Western  World,  —  but  like  the  vast  fecundities  of  the 
mysterious  Continent  from  which  he  comes,  it  holds 
within  itself  strange,  unmeasured  possibilities  of  charac 
ter  and  achievement.  No  one  can  believe,  whether  he 
be  Theist  or  Fatalist  or  Materialist,  that  a  racial  type 
so  old,  so  persistent,  so  numerous  in  its  representation, 
so  fundamentally  distinctive  and  yet  with  so  varied  a 
territorial  basis,  is  likely  to  pass  out  of  human  history 
without  a  far  larger  contribution  than  it  has  thus  far 
made  to  the  store  of  our  common  life  and  happiness. 

of  invasion  —  as  our  weaker  groups  of  every  sort  throng  and  press 
upon  the  life  and  standards  of  the  higher.  The  instinctive  protection 
of  the  higher,  narrowly  pursued,  is  but  a  false  and  futile  impulse  of 
aristocracy;  yet  this  protection  of  our  higher  groups,  sanely  and 
broadly  pursued,  will  prove  a  sound  and  indispensable  service  to  our 
democracy  as  a  whole. 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY 

The  deepest  thing  about  any  man  —  next  to  his 
humanity  itself  —  is  his  race.  The  negro  is  no  excep 
tion.  The  force  and  distinctness  of  his  racial  heritage, 
even  where  there  is  much  admixture  of  alien  blood,  is 
peculiarly,  conspicuously  strong.  This  persisting  and 
pervasive  individuality  of  race  is  the  ground  and  basis 
of  his  essential  culture  —  by  which  I  mean  not  the 
formal  product  of  a  literature,  a  religion,  or  a  science,  but 
that  more  intimate  possession  which  a  race  draws  into 
its  veins  and  blends  within  the  very  stuff  and  genius  of 
its  being  from  the  age-long  school  of  its  forests,  its 
rivers,  its  hungers,  —  its  battles  with  beast  and  fever 
and  storm  and  desert,  —  that  subconscious,  ineradicable 
life  which  stirs  beneath  its  deliberate  will  and  is  articu 
late  through  all  the  syllables  of  its  every  stated  pur 
pose.  In  the  deeper  sense,  no  negro  can  escape,  or 
ought  to  desire  to  escape,  the  Africa  of  his  past. 

This  is  the  culture  which  no  culture  adopted  here 
from  another  race  can  quite  transform :  it  is  this  which, 
in  every  land  where  its  individuality  and  significance 
are  given  any  collective  representation,  will  divide  the 
peoples  of  the  African  and  the  Teutonic  groups.  Even 
though  the  negro  race  in  America  acquire,  as  I  trust  it 
may,  the  thus-far  richer  and  lovelier  possessions  of  our 
heritage,  —  our  art,  our  knowledge,  our  wealth,  our 
industrial  aptitudes;  and  even  though  its  military  and 
political  loyalty  may  be  —  as  it  has  always  been  — 
unquestioned,  yet  its  deeper  culture  will  not  be  ours, 
nor  will  our  deeper  culture  be  fundamentally  its  own. 
It  will  hardly  be  a  possession  which  —  like  the  funda 
mental  affinity  of  certain  other  peoples  —  has  its  roots 
deep  in  a  soil  common  to  them  and  to  us,  a  culture 


8o  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

which  has  revealed  in  terms  of  social  efficiency  or  col 
lective  achievement  a  basis  of  racial  reciprocity. 

What  other  human  families  can  do,  what,  in  their 
social  ends,  they  will  do,  we  largely  know.  What 
the  negro  race,  as  a  race,  can  do  or  will  do,  our  own  race 
does  not  know.  Viewing  the  social  achievement  of 
human  groups  not  as  a  commercial  or  mechanical  con 
dition  of  affinity,  but  as  a  symbol  of  social  self-revelation, 
our  race  does  not  and  cannot  know  what  that  race  is. 
Its  unforgetable  mystery  is  itself.  The  white  man  fears 
and  shrinks  —  and  sometimes  strikes  —  not  primarily 
because  he  hates,  but  because  he  does  not  understand. 
The  thing  in  the  ignorant  negro  from  which  he  withdraws 
is  not  the  ignorance,  but  the  negro.  The  sub  tie  tendencies 
of  social  approximation,  of  amalgamation,  of  intermar 
riage,  overcome  last  of  all  the  obstacles  of  mystery  —  the 
barriers  of  the  unintelligible.  If  there  be  mere  weakness, 
it  can  be  given  strength ;  if  there  be  ignorance,  it  can  be 
informed;  if  there  be  poverty,  it  can  be  enriched;  if 
there  be  merely  a  strange  tongue  or  a  new  wisdom,  these 
can  be  put  to  school  or  we  can  be  put  to  school  to  them ; 
but  if  the  deeper  genius  of  all  relationship  —  the  self- 
revealing  self  —  be  absent,  we  have  not  the  clues  of 
understanding:  that  which  life  seeks  through  all  its 
seeking  is  shrouded  and  hid  away.  We  do  not  blame 
Africa  for  not  having  created  a  common  art,  a  collective 
culture,  an  efficient  state.  We  have  instinctively  de 
manded  them  not  because  they  are  indispensable  in 
themselves,  but  because  they  are  the  media  of  self- 
revelation.  The  ultimate  basis  of  intimate  social  affili 
ation  is  not  individual  (as  is  so  frequently  asserted) 
but  social.  It  is  not  the  inadequacy  of  exploration 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  81 

which  has  left  Africa  in  its  isolation,  so  much  as  the 
confusions,  the  ambiguity,  the  inadequacy  of  its  self- 
expression.  Africa  itself,  in  any  of  the  intelligible  terms 
of  social  experience  or  institutional  achievement,  has 
never  spoken.  The  race  is  undiscovered,  and  its  soul 
unfound. 
No  language,  therefore,  of  other  races,  no  acceptance 

—  however  brilliant  or  faithful  or  effective  —  of  the 
formulas  and  the  institutions  of  other  human  groups, 
will  quite  avail.     For  that  which  race  would  ask  of  race 

—  as  it  contemplates  the  issues  of  racial  and  domestic 
fusion  —  is  not  the  culture  of  another,  even  though  that 
other  be  itself ;  but  a  culture  of  its  own,  its  own  as  the 
instrument  of  its  self-revealing.     Especially  is  this  true 
when  the  stronger  race  is  one  which,  like  our  own, 
conceives  its  very  destiny  in  the  terms  of  social  and  in 
stitutional  development.      The  being  who,  upon  our 
solicitation,  sits  opposite  to  us  at  the  feast  of  life,  may 
be  (not  impossibly)  a  sinner  whom  we  must  redeem,  a 
weakling  whom  we  must  empower,  an   enemy  whom 

—  on   the   morrow  —  we  must  fight  or  must  forgive, 

—  but  hardly  the  Inscrutable.      And  that  within  the 
Inscrutable   from  which  we  are   here  withdrawn,  by 
some  far  pre-natal  force,   is  not  simply  its  mystery 
but  Itself. 

II 

These  are  but  additional  reasons  why  the  culture 
of  an  educated  class  among  the  negroes  of  the  United 
States  will  hardly  become  an  instrument  of  social  lever 
age  through  which  the  weaker  race  is  likely  to  become 
involved  in  any  considerable  fusion  with  the  stronger. 


82  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

Its  deeper  force,  its  more  intimate  individuality,  will 
continue  to  be  African.  It  is  a  truth  which  becomes 
the  more  significant  when  taken  in  its  relation  to  the 
fact  on  which  we  have  already  dwelt  —  the  fact  that 
with  this  group  (as  with  other  social  groups)  the  tend 
encies  toward  amalgamation,  toward  the  abandonment 
of  the  race's  individuality,  are  least  evident  within  its 
higher  levels.  The  Africa  which  claims  them  is  the 
Africa  which  they  have  claimed. 

And  just  as  in  the  deeper  sense  the  American  negro 
cannot  escape  the  Africa  of  his  past,  so  he  cannot  escape, 
and  will  not  desire  to  escape,  the  Africa  of  his  future. 
This  consideration,  viewed  in  its  larger  perspective,  is 
perhaps  even  more  important  than  the  other.  The 
negro,  unlike  the  American  Indian,  is  not  included  as 
a  social  totality  within  our  industrial  and  political  or 
ganization.  Quantitatively,  the  negro  does  not  begin 
and  end  among  us.  The  Indian  is  "  all  here."  The  ne 
gro  is  not  all  here.  He  has,  rather,  the  most  profound 
relations  —  historically  and  racially — with  the  nearly 
one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  a  vast  and  portentous 
continent.  Indeed,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  just  now 
the  two  most  significant  facts  in  connection  with  the 
larger  race-problems  of  the  modern  world  are  the  edu 
cated,  efficient,  creditable  negro  life  so  frequently  repre 
sented  within  the  limits  of  the  United  States  —  and  the 
reemergence  of  Africa. 

If  the  negro  were  "  all  here,"  were  included  quantita 
tively,  as  is  the  Indian,  within  our  borders,  there 
might  be  some  basis  for  the  contention  that  the  Africa 
of  his  past  will  be  forgotten,  that,  in  the  slow  passing 
of  the  generations,  what  is  peculiar  and  estranging  in 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  83 

his  genius  and  what  is  divisive  in  his  fundamental  culture 
will  possibly  be  overlaid  and  overcome.  But  this  is  not 
the  case.  The  absorption  of  the  American  Indian 
would  close  the  existence  of  the  Indian.  The  assimila 
tion  of  the  American  negro  would  not  absorb  the  negro. 
Rather,  it  is  probable  that  that  absorption,  and  the 
creation  here  of  the  vaster  aggregate  of  a  semi-negro 
group,  would  be  made  the  basis  of  a  still  greater  African 
infusion.  For  in  that  case  the  Africa  of  the  Orient 
would  be  found  waiting  at  the  heels  of  the  Africa  of  the 
Occident. 

The  old  isolation  of  the  negro's  continent  is  gone  for 
ever.  To  the  southward  the  problems  arising  from  the 
conflict  of  the  Boer  and  the  British;  at  the  North  the 
problem  of  the  English  relations  with  Egypt  and  the 
Soudan,  and  of  the  French  relations  with  Morocco; 
along  the  Congo  and  throughout  equatorial  Africa  the 
issues  presented  by  the  methods  of  the  Belgian,  are 
drawing  the  threads  of  African  development  up  into  the 
loom  of  our  international  interests  and  policies.  What 
ever  may  be  settled  or  unsettled  as  to  that  continent, 
whatever  may  be  discovered  or  undiscovered,  if  any  one 
thing  is  more  clearly  evident  than  another  it  is  this,  — 
that  with  length  of  time  its  significance  and  importance 
will  not  recede ;  and  that,  however  gradual  the  progress 
of  its  larger  inclusion  within  the  vivid  consciousness  of 
the  modern  world,  this  increasing  inclusion  is  as  in 
evitable  as  any  human  event  which  we  can  now  foresee. 

Nor  is  this  movement  of  closer  inter-relation  solely 
from  the  side  of  ourselves.  Lord  Curzon  has  recently 
stated,1  in  the  debates  upon  the  Eastern  situation,  that 

1  Hansard's  Parliamentary  Reports  (1908),  IV,  Vol.  191. 


84  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

all  Asia  —  from  the  obscurity  of  its  central  plateaus  to 
the  extremities  of  India  —  is  stirring  with  a  vague  un 
rest  (due,  in  large  measure,  to  the  result  of  the  Japanese- 
Russian  war),  and  that  the  lowest  of  its  tribal  groups 
has  somehow  learned  that  somewhere  far  to  the  north 
ward  there  has  been  a  great  conflict  in  which  a  dark 
race  has  been  victorious  over  a  white  race.  In  the 
life  of  Africa's  untutored  masses  some  have  found  a 
similar  agitation ;  and  yet,  if  such  restlessness  exist,  I 
should  be  disposed  to  find  for  it  a  somewhat  broader 
basis.  If  the  news  of  the  victory  of  Japan  has  been  a 
factor  in  these  situations,  there  have  been  other  factors 
also.  Under  the  prodding  of  our  divisions  and  redivi- 
sions  of  the  "spheres  of  influence,"  of  punitive  expedi 
tions  and  monitory  explorations,  the  self-consciousness 
of  a  Continent  —  even  in  its  lower  depths  —  cannot 
forever  sleep.  Nor  can  the  relations  of  our  international 
life  be  external  merely.  We  cannot  be  busied  with 
Africa  as  a  geographical  puzzle  without  desiring  it  as  a 
commercial  asset;  and  from  commercial  to  military 
relations  we  advance  even  more  directly,  for  the  reason 
that  it  is  not  easy  to  trade  where  it  is  not  possible  to  live. 
And  inasmuch  as  others  will  enter  or  will  wish  to  enter 
the  market  we  attend,  they,  too,  will  wish  to  protect 
their  agents  and  their  barter.  Thus  a  national  interest 
becomes  a  phase  of  international  policy.  A  question 
of  international  policy  becomes,  however,  under  any 
representative  government,  a  question  of  politics,  - 
for  the  party  in  power  must  seek  popular  support.  Soon 
the  issues  brought  into  the  foreground  by  the  Kaffir 
serve  to  determine  the  alternations  of  party  supremacy 
among  the  English  (just  as  the  issues  presented  by  the 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  85 

American  negro  have  frequently  put  men  into  office 
and  parties  into  power  in  the  United  States),  so  that  what 
began  as  the  intrusion  of  England  into  the  affairs  of 
Africa  ultimately  emerges  as  the  intrusion  of  Africa 
into  the  affairs  of  England.  Thus  also  is  Morocco 
denning  the  party  history  of  France,  and  thus  the 
negro  of  the  Congo  is  found  to  be  alive  and  assertive 
within  the  career  of  Brussels  and  her  king.  A  move 
ment  which  began,  therefore,  upon  every  hand  as  a 
mere  physical  invasion  has  become  —  and  will  become 
increasingly  —  a  whole  congeries  of  social  and  political 
relations. 

What  the  modern  world  itself  has  not  escaped,  and 
cannot  now  escape,  can  be  escaped  least  of  all  by  that 
social  factor  in  this  world  which  is  so  fundamentally 
bound  to  the  peoples  of  Africa  by  the  ties  of  history  and 
of  blood.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  negro  of  the  United 
States.  But  the  clearer  revelation  of  that  bond,  the 
pushing  upward  of  the  fact  and  significance  of  this 
relationship  into  our  national  consciousness,  can  hardly 
fail  to  be  followed  by  two  results.  It  would  seem  in 
the  first  place  to  make  still  more  improbable,  as  I  have 
already  pointed  out,  the  amalgamation,  through  inter 
marriage,  of  the  black  and  the  white  races  upon  our 
soil.  As  the  African  race  in  its  larger  unity  takes  its 
new  form  and  outline  within  our  popular  consciousness, 
as  its  larger  magnitude  and  the  vast  weight  of  its  un 
developed  elements  are  more  fully  understood,  there 
will  be  inevitable  recoil  within  the  masses  of  the  stronger 
race,  a  recoil,  however,  which  —  because  not  im 
mediately  involved  in  any  phase  of  our  own  sectional 
conflict  — will  not  necessarily  be  accompanied  by  any 


86  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

access  of  racial  bitterness.  The  reaction  from  even  the 
remoter  possibilities  of  racial  fusion  will  probably 
prove,  however,  to  be  decisive.  For  the  social  an 
nexation  of  Africa  by  the  white  peoples  of  Europe  and 
America  would  involve  something  less  akin  to  fusion 
than  to  inundation. 

The  reaction  among  the  white  peoples  which  is  likely 
to  follow  a  popular  appreciation  of  the  new  imminence 
of  Africa,  the  increase  of  race-consciousness  within  the 
stronger  group,  is  likely  to  induce  an  answering  reaction 
within  the  weaker  race,  —  a  reaction  even  among  its 
representatives  in  the  United  States.  Indeed,  for  the 
very  reason  that  their  greater  intelligence  and  their 
greater  efficiency  as  a  social  force  make  them  more 
sensitive  to  all  impressions  than  the  negro  of  Africa, 
it  is  not  improbable  that  they  will  become  early  and 
effective  interpreters  of  the  continent  and  its  races. 
Not  that  the  bodily  transference  of  the  negroes  of 
America  to  their  older  land  will  seem  either  profitable 
or  possible.  I  have  dwelt  elsewhere  upon  the  weak 
ness  of  such  a  policy.1  But  the  continuing  citizenship 
of  the  masses  of  the  race  within  the  United  States 
need  not  shut  out  the  negro  from  the  helping  of 
Africa.  It  may  prove,  indeed,  the  basis  of  a  sounder 
and  more  interested  cooperation. 

Such  an  expectation  may,  to  many,  seem  chimerical. 
It  may  be  that  the  conjecture  is  unfounded.  And  yet, 
can  we  be  mistaken  in  supposing  that  the  dumb  and 
helpless  peoples  of  that  one  vast  negro  land,  goaded  into 
an  awakened  life  and  constrained,  as  a  factor  in  policies 
they  cannot  comprehend,  to  minister  to  visions  which 
1  See  pp.  56,  57,  of  the  author's  "The  Present  South." 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  87 

they  know  not  how  to  share,  will  hardly  look  in  vain  to 
the  one  group  within  the  inhabitants  of  modern  states 
which  might  give  them  a  kinsman's  voice  ? 

I  well  know  that  among  some  of  the  intelligent  negroes 
of  America  the  very  subject  of  Africa  is  like  the  skeleton 
in  the  closet.  They  would  keep  well  within  the  back 
ground  their  affinity  with  an  older  and  weaker  world, 
that  their  own  origin  may  be  forgotten  in  their  progress. 
However  natural  such  an  impulse  may  be,  it  is,  I  think, 
doomed  to  rejection  by  the  intelligent  majority  of  the 
race. 

The  large  masses  of  the  unintelligent  in  America 
itself  have  made  formidable  indeed  the  burden  of  negro 
leadership.  The  strain  upon  its  resources  has  been 
great.  Here,  moreover,  the  negro  leader,  of  the  better 
type,  has  had  to  bear  the  weight  of  problems  imposed 
from  above  as  well  as  those  which  have  issued  from  be 
low.  The  conditions  of  the  development  of  the  race 
within  a  democratic  society  have  forced  into  the  fore 
ground  every  conceivable  type  of  political  or  social 
issue;  a  group  almost  wholly  undeveloped  has  been 
forced  by  the  exigencies  of  its  situation  into  a  conscious 
ness  of  the  issues,  and  into  a  participation  in  the  con 
troversies,  of  one  of  the  most  highly  developed  among 
modern  societies.  It  has  not  been  allowed  —  as  would 
have  been  the  case  under  normal  conditions  —  to 
develop  its  own  issues  in  response  to  the  development 
of  its  own  life ;  but,  upon  its  own  peculiar  issues  — 
issues  springing  naturally  and  normally  out  of  its  own 
needs  —  have  been  superimposed  the  social  and  political 
issues  of  the  stronger  group.  If  this  has  had  its  ad 
vantages,  it  has  involved  certain  disadvantages  of  the 


88  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

gravest  sort.  Not  the  least  of  these  has  been  the  com 
plexity  of  the  problem  presented  to  the  negro  leader. 
In  addition  to  the  sheer  weight  of  the  difficulties  in 
volved  in  the  ignorance  of  the  negro  masses  he  has  thus 
had  to  face  the  questions  presented  by  their  abnormal 
situation.  The  result  has  naturally  been  a  preoccu 
pation  with  American  issues,  an  almost  complete  ab 
sorption  of  interest  and  activity  in  the  national  rather 
than  the  international  fortunes  of  his  people. 

As  the  reemergence  of  Africa  becomes,  however, 
increasingly  evident,  and  as  the  varied  questions  pre 
sented  by  its  peoples  appear  and  reappear  within  the 
consciousness  of  the  modern  world,  I  have  no  manner 
of  doubt  as  to  the  response  of  the  representatives  of  the 
race  in  the  United  States.  Here  is  grouped,  in  a  peculiar 
sense,  the  race's  representative  life.  It  will  ring  true.  Its 
failure  to  respond  —  an  attitude  of  deliberate  indiffer 
ence  —  would  be  impossible.  Such  a  course  would 
suggest  that  those  finer  motives  under  which  the  best 
forces  of  American  society  have  brought  to  the  weak 
the  support  of  the  strong,  have  failed  of  their  essential 
fruit ;  for  the  true  gift  of  every  emancipating  enthusiasm 
is  not  solely  the  emancipation,  but  the  enthusiasm;  is 
not  liberty  in  its  formal  estate,  to  be  selfishly  enjoyed, 
but  that  liberty  of  the  spirit  which  sees  its  own  issues 
and  leaps  to  espouse  its  own  causes  under  all  the  forms, 
wherever  found,  of  negation  and  repression.  By  all 
the  psychology  of  its  life  it  must  so  respond  or  must 
decay. 

If  this  be  "  a  counsel  of  perfection  "  there  is  no  such 
counsel,  but  a  suggestion  of  solid  and  immediate  force, 
in  the  consideration  that  when  the  negroes  of  privilege 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  89 

show  a  disposition  to  ignore  the  fate  of  the  unprivileged 
the  moral  sense  of  the  world  is  shocked  and  the  position 
of  the  privileged  is  made  measurably  less  secure.  Many 
generations  of  history  must  pass  before  even  the  more 
progressive  sections  of  the  negro  population  will  hold  so 
commanding  a  place  in  the  western  world  as  to  be  in 
dependent  of  the  moral  solicitude  of  the  stronger  social 
groups.  They  may  not  wisely  offend  against  the  partial 
basis  of  their  preservation. 

Nor  will  they  wish  to  do  so.  Partly  through  the  op 
eration  of  a  community  of  interest,  partly  through  a 
community  of  suffering,  partly  through  the  presence  of 
prejudice  from  without,  the  sense  of  race  identity  has 
gained  a  deeper  sensitiveness  as  time  has  passed.  Their 
familiar  readiness  to  respond  to  a  "race-cause"  or  a 
"  race-policy "  (a  readiness  at  times  too  great)  will 
make  them  quick  to  claim  their  share  in  the  fate  of  their 
fellows  across  the  sea.  A  theatre  of  international  activity 
will  not  be  without  its  interest.  But,  above  all,  the 
higher  sagacity  of  the  race  will  perceive  an  opportunity 
of  supreme  magnitude  and  of  historic  dignity  in  the 
interpretation  of  the  mind  and  life  of  that  waiting, 
helpless,  innumerable  negro  world.  To  assist  it, 
however  humbly;  to  serve,  somewhat,  in  the  reorgan 
ization  and  diversification  of  its  trade  activities ;  to  aid 
a  little  in  reversing  the  old  and  hideous  policy  of  "  profit 
through  devastation,"  and  to  substitute  more  generally 
a  policy  based  upon  the  fundamental  and  constructive 
culture  of  its  resources;  to  help  the  world  to  think  a 
little  more  of  Africa  and  the  Africans  and  to  organize 
its  international  relations  within  that  continent,  not 
upon  a  basis  of  local  ruin,  but  upon  the  more  productive 


90  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

basis  of  local  development;  and,  in  the  light  of  Amer 
ica's  own  clear  demonstration  of  negro  capacity,  to 
give  Africa  its  voice  and  its  chance,  —  such,  to  the  in 
telligent  negroes  of  the  United  States,  will  seem  the  only 
conceivable  response  to  the  challenge  of  the  new  African 
situation.  And  in  that  response  they  will  find,  inevitably, 
a  new  and  higher  sense  of  their  relation  to  the  world. 
Through  the  grace  of  a  broader  service  of  the  now 
broader  negro  group,  their  own  struggle  will  become  less 
a  struggle  for  themselves  alone,  and  still  less  a  struggle 
to  lose  themselves  within  the  identity  of  another  social 
mass.  The  very  stress  and  truth  of  their  stewardship 
will  make  forever  impossible  their  self-obliteration  or 
their  self-despair.  However  impalpable  its  formal  or 
political  expression,  they  will  have  taken  a  continent  for 
their  ward ;  and  those  who  —  while  the  world  looks  on  — 
assume  such  a  part  upon  such  a  stage,  must  attain  new 
dignities  of  conviction,  and  a  new  sense  of  usefulness, 
and  a  stronger  and  clearer  consciousness  of  race. 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  I  here  anticipate  a  career  of 
international  meddling  for  the  American  negro.  Formal 
and  collective  protest  in  relation  to  political  and  social 
evils  will  always  have  its  place.  But  I  have  in  mind  a 
more  fundamental  service:  the  service,  first  of  all,  of 
men  who  are  negroes  and  yet  have  learned  how  to  ob 
serve  and  to  record  the  facts,  the  men  of  investigation; 
secondly,  men  who  are  skilled  in  the  methods  of  trade 
and  agriculture,  who  can  find  new  resources  and  new 
crops  and  can  teach  the  better  uses  of  the  old ;  thirdly, 
men  skilled  in  the  problems  of  transport  (the  tragedy  of 
Africa  is  largely  its  problem  of  transportation),  that 
labor  and  foods  may  find  their  markets,  and  that  the 


vi  NEGRO   RACE   INTEGRITY  91 

whole  task  of  distribution  for  people  and  for  products 
may  be  reorganized  upon  those  principles  of  efficiency 
which  American  genius  has  been  so  successful  in 
applying :  —  the  conqueror  of  Africa  will  be  neither  the 
explorer,  nor  the  soldier,  nor  the  diplomat,  but  the  expert 
in  distribution  —  though  his  work  may  perhaps  involve 
the  activities  of  all. 

Into  the  various  phases,  however,  of  the  modern 
service  of  the  continent  I  may  not  enter  here.  Their 
discussion  would  demand  a  monograph  rather  than  a 
suggestion.  And  yet  the  suggestion  may  serve  as  an 
illustration.  For  the  career  of  African  cooperation  will 
possess  its  historic  significance,  its  final  dignity,  and  its 
educative  force  (for  those  who  attempt  it)  by  reason  of 
its  fundamental  nature.  It  must  begin  at  the  bottom, 
for  that  is  where  the  task  itself  begins.  Political 
agitation  will  be  of  secondary  significance.  Yet  those 
who  enter  into  this  cooperation  and  who  serve  well  its 
far-reaching  ends  will  not  lack  in  any  form  of  whole 
some  public  influence ;  they  must  be  —  whatever  their 
outward  rank  —  the  real  counsellors  of  empire,  for  they 
will  hold  the  secrets  of  contented  and  productive  labor, 
of  social  stability  and  the  general  wealth. 

It  may  be  that  this  work  must  wait  for  white  men. 
It  is  possible  that  the  young  and  far-sighted  negroes  — 
trained  under  secular  and  religious  auspices  —  who 
have  already  entered  the  African  service  represent  no 
vital  movement  of  racial  interest;  it  may  be  that  the 
negro's  continent  must  be  reorganized  without  the 
negro's  help  and  must  be  rebuilded,  by  the  masterful 
spirit  of  another  race,  over  its  people's  prostrate  or 
reluctant  life,  and  yet  I  know  that  there  are  those 


92  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

among  the  younger  negroes  of  America  who  will  quietly 
say :  "It  shall  not  be !  We  may  not  for  many  years  be 
strong  enough  to  do  all  that  as  men  we  would  like  to 
do;  great  unsettled  issues  wait  us  here  at  home.  We 
know,  however,  that  the  world-problem  is  sometimes 
the  way  to  the  heart  of  the  home-problem;  that  we 
may  prove  weak,  but  that  there  can  be  no  such  proof 
of  weakness  as  the  spectacle  of  our  inactivity;  that  the 
task  is  great,  but  that  if  the  intelligence  now  within  the 
race  refuses  the  burdens  of  its  stewardship,  the  task 
will  be  greater  still ;  that  in  the  varied  depth  and  scope 
of  its  appeal  there  is  that  which  will  give  our  powers 
their  work  within  a  theatre  of  distinctive  use,  annexing 
our  fate  in  America  —  by  direct  inevitable  relationship 
—  to  one  of  the  world-changes  of  human  history.  We 
will  begin  in  tutelage,  but  we  will  begin.  Our  science 
we  will  put  to  work  to  regain  our  immunity  from  the 
fevers  of  the  tropics,  and  taking,  by  virtue  of  that  im 
munity,  our  best  of  wit  and  skill  into  the  central  furnace 
of  the  task,  and  proving  the  mettle  of  the  race  within 
the  alembic  of  its  forces,  we  will  win,  out  of  our  power 
to  serve,  a  power  to  lead.  We  will  make  ourselves 
necessary.  Upon  the  basis  of  our  necessity  to  Africa 
we  will  achieve  in  still  broader  measure  the  sense  of 
our  necessity  to  the  world,  knowing  that  all  that  shall 
contribute  to  that  sense  will  contribute  to  the  integrity, 
permanence,  and  happiness  of  our  racial  experience. 
If  the  white  man  must  redeem  the  black  man's  conti 
nent,  it  will  not  be  because  of  our  failure  to  believe  and 
to  attempt." 


vi  NEGRO   RACE    INTEGRITY  93 

III 

How  far  or  how  generally  such  an  avowal  will  find 
response  among  the  negroes  of  the  United  States  no 
man  can  say.  Those  within  any  social  group  who 
rise  to  the  higher  policies  of  collective  effort  are  not 
conspicuous  in  number.  And  yet  such  a  response 
now  represents  one  of  the  inevitable  directions  of  negro 
thought,  and  it  will  gain  in  its  definiteness  and  its 
momentum  with  every  quickening  and  deepening  in 
fluence  which  through  education  or  opportunity  touches 
the  negro's  life.  The  reemergence  of  Africa  means 
the  broadening,  here,  of  the  base  of  negro  solidarity, 
the  inclusion  within  the  present  consciousness  of  the 
race,  through  old  heredities,  and  through  resistless 
affinities  of  instinct,  of  a  whole  negro  world,  —  not  as 
a  mere  subordinate  section  of  some  proud  and  alien 
stock,  —  but  a  negro  world,  big  with  mystery,  sentient 
with  an  individuality  which  its  obscurities  have  pre 
served  and  strong  with  an  authority  which  its  formless 
ness  has  defined.  Here  indeed  is  but  one  of  the  larger 
forces  in  that  school  of  his  self-discovery  by  which  the 
negro  —  through  his  Africa  within  as  well  as  his  Africa 
without  —  is  finding  the  appeal  and  the  power  of  his 
race's  life. 

For  the  broadening  of  the  basis  of  a  race  conscious 
ness  is  —  among  an  educated  group,  a  group  educated 
to  the  point  of  a  self-conscious  experience  —  the  process 
of  its  intensification:  Through  that  capacity  for  self- 
projection  which  is  the  privilege  (or  the  penalty)  of  the 
educated  mind,  through  the  vicarious  quality  of  the 
social  imagination,  the  liberated  spirit  sees  within  each 


94  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  vr 

of  the  masses  of  the  social  group  with  which  it  is  identi 
fied  the  replica  of  itself,  its  other  soul,  asking  a  like 
deliverance.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  truest  Chris 
tian  is  inevitably  a  missionary  and  that  the  truest 
culture  finds  the  most  inexorable  bond  with  the  fate 
and  longing  of  the  ignorant.  It  is  this  truth  as  well 
as  that  "consciousness  of  kind"  which  has  been  called 
the  fundamental  sociological  postulate,  that  so  far  as 
the  negro  peoples  are  concerned,  has  made  almost 
every  intelligent  man  or  woman  —  in  some  sense  — 
"  a  worker  for  the  race,"  a  sharer  in  the  race's  suffering, 
a  serious  but  rejoicing  captive  of  its  identity,  its  hope, 
its  future.  Those  in  whom  the  intensity  of  this  racial 
life  has  weakened  are  those  who  have  shut  out  the  vision 
of  its  multitude,  and  have  narrowed  the  numerical 
basis  of  their  racial  contact.  Those  whose  doors  are 
ajar,  who  walk,  in  fact  or  in  imagination,  in  and  out 
among  the  throngs  of  its  population,  —  these  behold 
and  remember,  and  by  the  music  of  that  murmur 
which  sweeps  through  them  from  the  fields  of  stirring 
but  yet  unawakened  life  they  build  and  rebuild  — 
patiently  and  not  unconfidently  —  the  structure  of 
their  allegiance.  Those  who  think  that  the  educated 
life  will  turn  the  negro  from  his  race  and  will  make 
him  seek  the  destiny  of  another  group,  know  little  of 
the  tendencies  of  the  negro  and  still  less  of  the  ten 
dencies  of  education. 
X 


THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPOR 
TUNITY:  DESPAIR  AS  A  FORCE  OF 
DISINTEGRATION 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    INTEGRATING    FORCE    OF    OPPORTUNITY:    DESPAIR 
AS    A   FORCE    OF    DISINTEGRATION 


WE  return  again,  therefore,  to  the  fact  itself.  The 
impulses  of  desertion  from  the  life  and  destiny  of  the 
negro  race  are  moving  within  its  lower  rather  than 
within  its  higher  levels.  At  its  higher  levels  the  race 
betrays  little  tendency  toward  a  weakening  of  the  sense 
of  solidarity ;  the  tendency  is  rather  in  the  direction  of  a 
stronger  and  intenser  racial  life.  The  educated  negroes 
are  keeping  more  closely  than  ever  to  themselves.  Many 
who  are  so  largely  white  that  the  fact  of  " color"  is 
not  observable,  and  who,  by  moving  into  other  com 
munities,  might  easily  lose  themselves  within  the 
masses  of  the  stronger  race,  take  no  such  course.  Here 
and  there  one  does  so,  but  such  instances  are  far  less 
common  than  they  were  some  twenty  years  ago.  The 
power  of  the  race  to  "hold  its  own"  against  all  the 
forces  of  disintegration  has  been  marked.  It  is 
a  power  which  is  increasing  rather  than  decreasing, 
and  it  is  increasing  in  direct  relation  to  the  progress  of 
education.  It  is  an  issue  of  development. 

The  man  who  has  dealt  familiarly  with  the  negro 
field-hand,  the  man  or  woman  who  has  known  prac 
tically  no  type  of  the  race  except  the  more  ignorant 
among  the  negroes  in  domestic  service,  is  often  con 
fident  that  "  the  first  effect  of  education  will  be  to  make 

97 


98  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  negro  want  to  be  a  white  man."  But  the  chief 
consideration  is  not  as  to  "the  first  effect  of  education" 
but  as  to  its  second  effect:  its  result  as  a  continuing 
process  and  as  a  consistent  policy  of  the  state.1  And 
the  field  of  observation  —  in  estimating  the  results 
of  education  —  should  hardly  be  limited  to  the  un 
educated.  The  uneducated  negro  has  known,  as 
a  rule,  almost  as  little  as  the  white  employer,  of  the 
educated  of  the  negro  race;  his  associations  with  an 
educated  world,  having  chiefly  thrown  him  with  an 
educated  world  of  white  men,  are  likely  therefore  to 
make  him  feel  that  the  only  access  to  it  is  through 
the  white  man's  life  —  an  impression  strengthened  by 
every  opponent  of  a  policy  of  negro  education. 

1 1  have  elsewhere  so  fully  discussed  the  question  of  negro  education 
(see  "The  Present  South,"  Chapters  III  and  VIII)  that  I  need  not 
here  enter  upon  details.  When  confronted,  however,  by  the  contention 
that  education,  as  such,  is  injurious  to  the  negro,  one  is  reminded 
somewhat  of  Sydney  Smith's  reply  to  those  who  made  similar  objection 
to  the  education  of  women  "Can  anything,"  he  inquired,  " be  more 
absurd  than  to  suppose  that  the  care  and  solicitude  which  a  mother 
feels  for  her  children  depends  upon  her  ignorance  of  Greek  and  mathe 
matics?  It  would  appear,  from  such  objections,  that  ignorance  is 
the  great  civilizer  of  the  world."  So,  in  reference  to-day  to  the  vexed 
question  of  the  negro,  —  there  are  those  who  seem  to  believe  that  in 
view  of  the  alleged  relation  between  education  and  crime  we  have 
only  to  abolish  our  schools  in  order  to  restore  the  black  man  to  a  state 
of  innocence  and  industry.  It  would  be  interesting  to  inquire  just 
what  degree  of  ignorance  and  neglect,  upon  such  a  theory,  may  be 
precisely  calculated  as  a  condition  of  perfectitude  in  the  moral  de 
velopment  of  negro  character.  That  the  old-time  darky  was,  in  fact, 
the  educated  negro  of  his  period;  that  to-day  the  graduates  of  the 
reputable  negro  schools  are  incomparably  the  least  criminal  element 
of  the  race;  and  that  it  is  only  through  systematic  training  that  the 
negro  masses  can  be  made,  however  slowly  and  painfully,  efficient 
producers  as  well  as  effective  consumers  and  purchasers,  —  such  con 
siderations  are  everywhere  having  a  larger  measure  of  recognition. 


vii     THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY    99 

Nor  does  the  uneducated  mind  of  any  race  know 
just  what  education  will,  for  itself,  involve.  It  can 
not  imagine.  Just  as  few  poor  men  who  inherit  a 
fortune  ever  do,  or  ever  want  to  do,  with  their  money 
what  they  once  dreamed  they  would  do  with  it,  so  — 
yet  in  a  more  inexorable  sense  —  no  ignorant  man  is 
likely  to  want  to  use  an  education  just  as  he  first  im 
agined  he  should  use  it.  Its  chief  possessions  are,  in 
the  first  place,  not  new  possessions  but  new  needs. 
New  aptitudes  accompany  them,  but  these  aptitudes  are 
themselves  the  forces  of  needs  still  deeper  and  more 
imperious.  Among  these  is  the  hunger  for  association. 
The  profoundest  need  of  every  educated  life  is  for  an 
other  educated  life.  The  deepened  instinct,  the  edu 
cated  impulse,  is  assimilative,  accumulative,  social. 
It  demands  and  creates  a  community.  Society  itself 
has  been  builded  by  education,  by  knowledge,  which 
deepens  individual  need  —  the  need  of  mind  for  mind  - 
and  by  the  discipline  which  makes  efficient  that  re 
sponse  to  common  needs  which  is  represented  in  the 
defensive  and  constructive  functions  of  the  state. 

The  ignorant  negro  may  have  all  sorts  of  crude  ideas 
as  to  what  he  would  do  with  himself  if  educated.  But, 
as  education  comes,  it  does  with  him  quite  as  much 
as  he  does  with  it.  It  takes  him  into  the  companion 
ship  of  other  educated  negroes.  It  appropriates  him 
in  behalf  of  a  common  standpoint.  It  introduces  him 
into  the  collective  intelligence  of  his  people.  He  comes 
to  share  their  racial  interests.  He  is  involved  within 
the  formative  tendencies  of  a  class-consciousness  and 
enters  into  the  heritage  of  race  ideals,  policies,  antipa 
thies.  This  is  the  broader  education  to  which  he  is 


ioo  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

introduced  by  "  education."  With  every  new  need  he 
turns  inevitably  to  those  who  understand  and  share 
that  need.  With  every  new  power  he  turns  to  those 
who,  sharing  a  like  power  and  moved  by  a  like  interest, 
can  —  through  union  with  it  —  increase  its  force  and 
its  fruitfulness.  Thus  the  whole  drive  and  pressure 
of  his  situation,  from  the  side  of  its  disadvantages  as 
well  as  by  reason  of  its  advantages,  is  in  the  direction 
of  his  closer  identification  with  the  consciousness  and 
the  fortunes  of  his  race.  Under  the  conditions  which 
surround  him  it  is  inevitable  that  as  he  becomes  more 
of  a  man  he  will  become  more  of  a  negro. 

And  as  in  this  higher  sense  he  becomes  more  of  a 
negro,  he  will  become  more  of  a  man,  —  more  re 
sponsive  to  those  collective  responsibilities,  to  those 
social  interests  and  instincts,  which  deepen  the  qualities 
of  individual  character.  This  does  not  involve  his 
forfeiture  of  the  freer  standpoint  of  humanity.  The 
citizen  of  the  United  States  becomes  more  of  an  Ameri 
can  as  he  becomes  more  of  a  man,  becomes  more  of  a 
man  as  he  becomes  more  of  an  American.  The  ac 
ceptance  of  one's  standpoint  within  one's  national  or 
racial  group  deepens,  and  does  not  destroy,  one's  share 
in  the  universal  fortune  of  the  universal  race. 

Yet  in  every  social  and  collective  sense  it  is  inevi 
table  that  under  all  the  influences  which  now  engage 
him  the  negro  should  assume  increasingly  the  negro's 
standpoint.  The  deeper  impulses  of  his  segregation 
are  but  his  response  to  the  larger  sway  of  that  con 
sciousness  of  kind  to  which  all  the  stronger  peoples  of 
history  have  answered.  The  growing  clearness  with 
which  the  race  perceives  its  destiny,  and  the  fidelity 


vii   THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY    101 

with  which  it  follows,  will  mark,  indeed,  the  measure 
of  its  essential  strength.  With  larger  education  and 
a  more  accurate  self-knowledge  it  will  find  the  force 
of  its  segregation  less  and  less  within  the  barriers  of 
antipathy  imposed  by  other  groups,  and  more  and  more 
within  the  necessities  and  the  satisfactions  of  its  own 
development.  The  barriers  of  the  advanced  groups  will 
play,  and  ought  to  play,  their  part.  They  present  an 
element  in  that  pressure  from  the  side  of  the  stronger 
race  which  —  sometimes  extravagantly,  but  on  the 
whole  wisely— has  directly  operated  to  intensify  the  soli 
darity  of  the  weaker.  But  these  barriers  are  external. 
The  explanations  and  policies  which  are  based  upon 
them  are  partial  rather  than  fundamental.  That  which 
turns  the  educated  life  of  the  negro  race  into  the  course 
and  channel  of  its  own  development  is  the  force  of  its 
inward  necessities  and  aspirations,  is  an  instinct  from 
within  rather  than  repression  from  without,  is  that  call  of 
Itself — of  its  own  social  individuality — which  is  strength 
ened  by  its  expression  and  freed  by  its  opportunities. 

Nothing  could  be  more  misleading  or  more  profitless 
in  the  conduct  of  an  inquiry  as  to  the  results  of  edu 
cation  than  to  confuse  the  educated  with  the  literate. 
The  statistics  of  illiteracy  —  encouraging  as  they  are 
in  the  study  of  negro  progress  *  —  have  little  bearing 
upon  the  general  significance  of  education.  The  mere 
ability  to  read  or  to  write,  or  to  do  both,  does  not  make 
a  white  man  " educated";  still  less  does  it  constitute 

1  The  number  of  illiterates  in  the  negro  population  of  the  United 
States  10  years  of  age  and  over  was  reduced  from  70  per  cent  in  1880 
to  44.5  per  cent  in  1900.  See,  for  the  statistics  by  States,  the  author's 
"The  Present  South,"  p.  302. 


102  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

"education"  within  a  social  group  almost  wholly  given 
to  agriculture,  or  to  other  rural  or  physical  employ 
ments  which  demand  no  necessary  development  of  this 
initial  power. 

It  is,  moreover,  inaccurate  to  assume  that  the  educa 
tional  process  is  a  mere  quantitative  extension  of  ca 
pacity  in  a  fixed  direction  determined  by  a  straight  line. 
Under  this  assumption  a  little  "education"  may  be 
indicated  by  registering  a  mark  upon  this  line,  and  the 
still  greater  degrees  of  education  may  be  precisely  in 
dicated  by  further  marks  upon  this  line  in  the  same 
fixed  direction.  Thus  it  is  assumed  that  the  formal  char 
acter  and  the  ultimate  result  of  the  whole  educational 
process  can  be  predicted  from  the  direction  and  the  ten 
dencies  indicated  by  "education"  in  its  earliest  stage. 

It  would  be  difficult,  however,  to  conceive  of  a  more 
questionable  inference.  The  educational  process  is  not 
quantitative  but  stimulative.  It  is  indeed  formative, 
but  the  formative  response  is  organic  rather  than 
mechanical.  So  far  from  maintaining  a  fixed  direction, 
its  direction,  especially  in  its  earlier  stages,  is  likely 
to  be  changed  at  any  point.  The  direction  indicated 
within  the  period  at  which  the  individual  crosses  the 
simple  boundary  dividing  the  illiterate  from  the  lit 
erate  —  as  represented  by  individual  aspirations  or  by 
personal  and  social  habit  —  is  often  precisely  contrary 
to  the  direction  taken  at  a  later  stage.  There  are  few 
of  our  boys  who  at  the  age  of  fifteen  continue  to  retain 
those  ideas  about  being  a  policeman  which  possessed 
them  at  the  age  of  five;  there  are  few  adults  passing 
far  into  any  educative  experience,  whether  literary 
or  practical,  who  maintain  the  initial  direction  of 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY     103 

their  earliest  impulse;  there  are  few  social  groups 
which  after  even  a  partial  education  maintain  the  first 
tendencies  of  a  primitive  industry  without  serious  and 
increasing  diversification.  The  initial  direction  of 
the  educational  process  is  not  mechanically  maintained 
in  conformity  with  a  straight  line  (so  many  yards  of 
education  indicating  a  like  number  of  yards  of  the 
same  kind  of  man) ;  it  is  a  process  of Jjberation ;  and 
its  chief  service  in  its  later  stages  —  as  it  touches 
a  social  group  without  a  long- established  racial  ten 
dency  —  is  to  enable  its  members  to  change  and  to 
correct  the  crude  initial  direction  of  their  first  educa 
tional  impulse.  And  this  —  viewed  in  the  larger  per 
spective  —  is  precisely  what,  in  the  case  of  the  negro 
race,  has  happened. 

It  may  be  objected  that  while  the  preceding  sug 
gestions  may  be  true  of  the  stronger  race  they  are  not 
true  of  the  weaker,  inasmuch  as  the  psychology  of  the 
negro  is  not  the  psychology  of  the  white  man.  That  is 
in  some  measure  true.  The  psychology  of  the  French 
man  is  not  quite  the  psychology  of  the  American.  Nor 
is  a  negro  merely  a  white  man  beneath  a  darker  skin. 
But  a  fact  is  none  the  less  a  fact,  and  it  is  to  the  fact 
in  the  case,  at  this  and  at  each  other  point,  that  our 
theory  of  the  negro's  psychology  must  conform.  We 
must  gain  our  notions  of  a  particular  "psychology" 
from  the  facts;  we  must  not  assume  our  facts  from  the 
basis  of  an  assumed  psychology.  In  reference,  there 
fore,  to  the  immediate  question  with  which  we  have 
been  dealing,  the  emerging  result  betrays  no  pro 
foundly  racial  "color";  the  negro  as  he  becomes  really 
educated  does,  in  fact,  correct  such  aberrations  as  may 


104  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

have  been  manifested  in  the  earliest  period  of  his  school 
ing;  he  does  respond,  indisputably,  to  the  instinct 
of  racial  solidarity;  he  does  claim,  from  within,  his 
affinity  and  identity  with  his  race's  life;  he  does  —  with 
his  increasing  manhood — become  increasingly  and  more 
confidently  a  deliberate  inheritor  of  its  destiny,  a  negro. 
In  the  popular  discussion  of  the  effect  of  education 
upon  our  negroes  we  have  sometimes  given  more  at 
tention  to  those  in  whom  the  educational  process  has 
been  imperfectly  initiated  than  to  those  in  whom  it 
has  been  partially  completed.  The  immediate  results 
of  the  three  months'  term  of  an  elementary  rural  school 
in  a  log  cabin  under  an  eighty-dollar-a-year  teacher  i 
are  assumed  to  be  more  significant  than  the  data  repre 
sented  in  the  hundreds  of  negro  men  and  women  who, 
through  long  and  intelligent  sacrifices,  have  really  won 
a  foothold  within  the  precincts  of  the  educated  life. 
The  whole  country,  South  and  North,  has  given  large 
support  to  the  schooling  of  the  negro  race,  but  the  task 
has  been  so  prodigious  in  its  proportions  that  it  is 
hardly  within  the  masses  of  these  people  (by  reason  of 
the  limited  application  of  the  policy  of  public  instruc 
tion)  that  we  can  look  for  representative  results.  These 
results  are  rather  to  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  the  minor 
ity,  a  minority  as  yet  inconspicuous,  and  —  because  of 
the  social  separation  which  obtains  and  which,  I  believe, 

1  The  negro  teacher,  of  course,  is  free,  while  not  employed,  to  take 
up  other  forms  of  work,  so  that  his  professional  income  is  supple 
mented  from  outside  the  school.  The  lot  of  the  white  teacher  is  often 
almost  as  poor.  The  inadequacy  of  the  local  revenues  to  meet  the 
demands  of  proper  professional  remuneration  for  the  teacher  is  one 
of  the  gravest  problems  of  rural  life,  particularly  at  the  South,  but  also 
at  the  North  and  West. 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY     105 

should  continue  to  obtain  between  the  stronger  and  the 
weaker  race  —  a  minority  largely  unknown  by  the  casual 
observer.  Yet  it  does,  in  fact,  find  creditable  represen 
tation  in  almost  every  important  American  commu 
nity.  It  is  thus  difficult  to  point  out  the  results  of 
education  among  the  minority;  it  is  easy  to  point  out 
the  crudities  of  education  among  the  majority,  for 
the  majority  (in  familiar  personal  service  all  about  us) 
are  not  negligible  or  forgetable.  And  yet  as  we  pause, 
and  give  ourselves  to  our  thinking  and  our  remember 
ing,  there  are  few  of  us  who  do  not  know  of  the  well- 
settled  negro  districts  in  our  Southern  and  Northern 
cities,  or  of  small  but  well-conducted  negro  farms,  in 
which  the  quiet,  decent,  self-respecting  men  and  women 
of  this  race  are  creating  the  negro  home  and  are  slowly 
but  steadily  advancing  the  level  of  negro  life.  Such 
negroes  are  exceptional,  of  course.  Who  could  reason 
ably  expect  otherwise?  Yet  the  point  of  chief  signifi 
cance  is  not  that  they  are  exceptional  but,  first,  that 
they  exist;  secondly,  that  they  are  increasing  rather 
than  decreasing  in  number;  and,  thirdly,  that  by 
reason  of  the  admiration  accorded  them  among  their 
fellows  it  is  obvious  that  their  leadership  is  accepted, 
and  that  their  own  progress  is  indicative  of  the  maturer 
tendencies  of  their  racial  movement  and  an  earnest  of 
its  more  positive  and  more  general  advance. 

II 

The  fact,  however,  to  which  I  would  here  again  recur 
is  the  nature  of  this  racial  movement  in  reference  to 
the  question  of  racial  disintegration.  Its  whole  animus 


106  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

and  direction  are  the  other  way.  Here  are  those  with 
the  least  thought  of  fusion  and  amalgamation,  with  the 
most  thought  of  what  the  negro  in  America  may  be 
come.  And  they  are  so  because  racially,  intellectually, 
socially,  they  are  not  bankrupt;  they  have  begun  to 
create  a  racial  wealth,  however  meagre,  and  to  share 
a  racial  consciousness,  however  troubled;  a  wealth 
of  memories  —  for  they  have  begun  to  have  a  history; 
a  wealth  of  present  gain  —  for  they  have  attained  a 
competence,  a  home,  and  friends;  a  wealth  of  hope  — 
for  they  have  begun  to  share  with  one  another  those 
common  deprivations  and  affections,  those  mutual 
responsibilities  and  interests  which  sober  and  clear  the 
vision  of  the  future :  and  the  consciousness  into  which 
they  come  is  that  of  men  and  women  bound  within  a 
bond  which  they  may  bear,  and  inheriting  a  destiny 
they  may  attempt,  because  manhood  and  womanhood 
are  not  impossible  within  it,  but  still  attainable,  - 
the  world  offering  them,  at  a  cost  however  sharp,  the 
nobler  sufficiencies  of  life,  its  freedom  to  grow  and  its 
opportunity  to  serve. 

Withdraw  that  education  which  has  represented  both 
the  opportunity  and  the  process  of  acquisition,  and 
what  becomes  of  this  higher  negro  wealth  and  this 
finer  self -consciousness  of  a  thus  self-respecting  race? 
Let  us  admit  its  inadequacies,  its  imperfections,  —  how 
will  you  improve  them?  Will  you  improve  them  by 
destroying  them?  Will  you  strengthen  the  appeal 
of  the  negro's  racial  life  by  making  that  life  synonymous 
with  destitution?  Is  there  a  remedy  for  a  defective 
racial  pride  in  a  denial  of  those  things  upon  which  an 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY     107 

honest  pride  is  nurtured  ?  Can  you  expect  to  hold  men 
in  patient  allegiance  to  a  race  by  withholding  from  the 
race  itself  the  opportunities  of  self-expression  and  self- 
development?  Will  a  man  willingly  remain  a  negro, 
or  will  a  negro  long  remain  a  man,  if  the  capacities 
of  the  one  cannot  be  unfolded  within  the  destiny  of 
the  other?  Is  it  not  abundantly  obvious  that  the  man 
cannot  remain  a  negro  unless  the  negro  can  become 
at  length  a  man? 

"What  then  will  he  do?"  I  hear  some  one  ask. 
"Will  he  become  other  than  a  negro?"  I  answer  yes, 
and  yet  no.  "But  he  shall  not  become  a  white  man," 
is  the  retort,  "we  will  wall  him  in;  we  have  already 
done  so ;  we  will  strengthen  the  wall,  we  will  sink  its 
foundations  deeper,  we  will  build  it  higher,  and  then 
we  will  house  it  over.  He  shall  remain  as  he  is." 

No,  he  will  not  remain  as  he  is:  that  is  one  of  the 
few  things  in  this  strange  and  tragic  case,  of  which  we 
may  be  sure.  He  will  not  remain  as  he  is.  A  race's 
life  is  an  organic  growth;  it  is  not  like  a  dead  platform 
that  we  can  safely  build  our  houses  over  or  our  walls 
about;  it  is  a  living  thing.  You  can  force  it  back  and 
can  lay  it  prostrate,  but  when  you  have  driven  it  even 
underground,  it  will  reappear.  Its  living  roots,  its  secret 
and  extending  tentacles  of  growth,  will  search  beneath 
the  familiar  soil,  will  find  their  way  below  the  founda 
tions  of  your  wall,  will  come  up  upon  the  outer  side  — 
intertwined  with  your  own  growth,  blended  with  your 
stock,  and  terrible  in  their  confusions  and  their  fruitage. 
No;  build  your  walls  if  you  will,  but  give  to  this  race 
also  a  garden  of  noble  spaces;  build  your  walls  high 
in  self-protection,  but  rear  them  as  no  dungeon  above 


io8  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

another  life.  Let  its  growth  have  also  its  own  sunshine, 
light  from  the  same  sun,  nurture  from  the  same  air  and 
the  same  rains;  let  all  wise  and  pure  conspiracies  ad 
vance  it.  Its  liberation  will  mean  not  its  encroach 
ment,  but  its  self-fulfilment.  Force  it  downward  into 
degeneracy  and  abasement,  and,  having  no  garden  and 
no  sunshine  of  its  own,  its  pervasive  and  intruding 
death  will  seek  you  out.  Your  sounder  health  depends 
less  upon  its  repression  than  upon  its  freedom. 

And  yet  there  are  those  who  seriously  contend  that 
negro  education  and  negro  self-development  will  prove 
a  peril  to  the  white  man's  integrity  of  race !  —  little 
realizing  that  in  all  racial  groups  the  prime  force  of 
disintegration  is  despair.1  The  negro's  life  cannot  pass 
into  the  life  of  another  race  by  the  open  ways  of  so 
cial  acceptance  and  reciprocity,  but  "the  underground 
passage"  -  the  passage  through  his  complicity  with  the 
white  man's  vice  —  is  always  open  to  him.  With 
every  weakening  of  his  collective  courage,  with  every 
lowering  of  any  reasonable  hope,  with  every  weight 
added  to  the  unequal  burden  of  his  labor,  you  relax 
the  pride  of  his  conscience,  the  nerve  of  his  racial  self- 
esteem,  the  vigor  of  the  bond  of  those  reservations  and 

1  It  is  sometimes  assumed  that  the  disintegration  of  a  racial  group 
under  the  conditions  of  despair  is  equivalent  to  an  easy  process  of 
"quick  evaporation,"  —  to  be  surveyed  with  equanimity  by  the 
stronger  group.  But  the  soil  of  social  catastrophe,  whether  individ 
ual  or  collective,  is  not  the  wholesome  earth  but  society  itself.  De 
composition,  with  all  its  noisome  horrors,  must  proceed  within  the 
enfolding  contact  of  the  larger  and  stronger  group.  A  defeated 
race  does  not  die  instantly  into  oblivion;  it  dies  first  (through  long  and 
tedious  processes  of  self-perpetuation)  into  the  life  of  the  group  pre 
vailing;  dies  as  its  despair  makes  union  with  the  sins  of  the  strong, 
into  the  lower  life  of  the  race  above  it. 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY     109 

fidelities  which  every  man,  however  lowly,  throws  — 
or  wants  to  throw  —  about  himself,  his  home,  his 
women,  his  children  —  and  you  break  up,  bitterly 
and  desolately,  the  very  foundations  of  his  race  alle 
giance.  The  arch-enemies  of  race  integrity  are  those 
white  men  who  have  become  the  strident  opponents  of 
negro  development.  The  fomenters  of  the  race's  de 
spair  are  among  the  factors  of  its  disintegration.  The 
promoters  of  racial  fusion,  the  real,  though  unwitting, 
apostles  of  amalgamation,  are  no  longer  the  Aboli 
tionists  of  the  East,  but  those  anti-negro  extremists  of 
every  section  who  in  their  war  upon  the  opportunities 
of  this  weaker  race  would  put  the  foundations  of  its 
integrity  upon  the  shifting  and  dissolving  basis  of  its 
self-contempt.  You  cannot  in  that  way  build  up  a 
white  race  —  a  race  already  full  of  initial  confidence, 
—  much  less  can  you  in  that  way  build  up  a  black  race. 

How,  I  again  ask,  can  the  negro  be  expected  to  cling 
to  his  race-world  with  simplicity  of  feeling  or  tenacity 
of  purpose  if  that  world  be  chiefly  synonymous  with 
humiliation,  and  if  the  only  creditable  or  honorable 
world  of  which  he  knows  is  the  world  of  another  people  ? 
He  who  increases  for  the  negro  the  legitimate  com 
pensations  and  satisfactions  of  his  own  world  deepens 
within  him  the  formative  attractions  of  his  race,  binds 
him  within  its  hopes,  annexes  him  through  ultimate 
and  self-evidencing  forces  to  its  interests  and  its  future. 
Those  who  are  defeating  the  tendencies  toward  amalga 
mation  are  the  friends  of  his  progress,  the  combatants 
of  his  despair. 

First  of  these,  in  point  of  honor,  I  will  venture  to  put 
the  men  and  women  of  his  own  group,  who,  despite  de- 


no  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

sertion  from  within  and  discouragement  from  without, 
are  making,  with  unpretentious  fidelity,  a  clear  and 
consistent  demonstration  of  negro  life,  —  clean,  whole 
some,  self-contained.  Second,  I  will  put  those  of  every 
latitude  —  indeed  of  every  nation  —  who,  coming  to 
watch  this  modern  birth  of  the  negro  consciousness  into 
a  new  and  strange  self-knowledge,  have  remained  to  pray 
rather  than  to  scoff,  and  to  help  rather  than  to  accuse. 
These  influences  outside  the  race,  cooperating  with  its 
truer  representatives,  are  providing,  through  the  se 
curities  and  the  opportunities  accorded  it,  the  real  forces 
of  its  integration,  the  powers  of  its  self-possession  and 
its  self-development.  For  the  solidarity  that  is  thus 
achieved  is  from  within.  Its  strength  —  the  only 
ultimate  strength  of  any  social  group  —  is  the  strength 
of  a  life  self-chosen.  Its  integrity  is  not  a  reluctant 
and  artificial  attainment  from  without,  a  result  of 
external  pressures  and  prejudices,  failing  when  they 
relax  and  therefore  as  insecure  as  the  alertness  of  other 
groups;  an  integrity  never  really  its  own  because 
thus  dependent  upon  the  presence  and  activities  of  dis 
positions  outside  itself,  —  but  a  race  integrity  of  its 
own,  because  protected  by  the  inclinations  and  dis 
positions  of  its  own  spirit,  responsive  to  its  will  and 
growing  with  its  growth. 

A  negro  race  integrity  so  founded  is  the  only  sort 
that  is  really  founded  anywhere.  You  cannot  found 
the  integrity  of  one  race  in  the  aversions  of  another  race. 
You  cannot  base  the  life  of  one  people  upon  a  foun 
dation  solely  existent  in  another  people.  You  cannot 
force  the  negro  to  continue  to  be  a  negro  merely  by  re 
solving  that  the  white  man  shall  continue  to  be  a  white 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY     in 

man.  You  must  annex  the  negro  to  his  own  race 
and  his  own  future  by  the  forces  of  his  own  choice  and 
the  instinctive  movement  of  his  own  growth,  or  you  have 
not  annexed  him  to  his  race  at  all.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  old  philosophy  of  repression  has  utterly  broken 
down.  Our  millions  of  mulattoes,  our  deeper  degrada 
tions  of  infertile  vice,  are  evidence  of  its  futility.  I 
would  not  be  misunderstood.  I  have  already  indicated 
that  certain  phases  of  our  self-protective  discriminations 
were  necessary  in  their  origin;  some  are  necessary 
still,  —  especially  where  the  black  masses  are  formidable 
in  numbers  and  the  lack  of  education  has  left  them  with 
a  real  race  standpoint  and  a  racial  self-respect  wholly 
undeveloped.  But  the  remedy  is,  therefore,  no  per 
petuation  of  repression,  but  opportunity.  Deliverance 
lies  not  solely  in  the  white  man's  baldly  assuming  the 
perpetual  attitude  of  the  policeman  over  his  treasure, 
but  in  giving  the  negro  a  treasure  too;  and,  as  he  be 
comes  slowly  conscious  of  his  treasure,  he  himself  be 
comes  also  a  policeman,  on  guard  as  a  man  and  as  a 
race  above  his  own.  Keep  him  forever  in  his  bank 
ruptcy  and  his  destitution,  without  a  life  to  attract  him 
or  a  treasure  to  conserve,  and  these  millions  will  be 
come  conscious  of  their  race  only  to  disown  it  and  to 
betray  it,  —  a  despairing  and  devouring  menace  to  the 
wholesome  stability  of  our  own  life,  and  a  noisome 
indictment  of  'the  perversity  or  the  incapacity  of  our 
statesmanship. 

Ill 

So  far,  therefore,  am  I  from  believing  that  the  factor 
of  the  negro  in  our  population  is  a  sound  reason  for 


ii2  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

postponing  a  policy  of  "compulsory  education,"  that  I 
am  persuaded  that  the  negro  is  one  of  the  stronger 
arguments  for  such  a  program.  Those  who  believe  that 
the  separate  integrity  of  our  racial  groups  should  be 
protected  and  perpetuated  should,  indeed,  be  the  last  to 
oppose  any  policy  of  Church  or  State  which  will  con 
tribute  to  the  respective  forces  of  their  self -development. 
To  bring  the  masses  of  the  weaker  group  into  the  circle 
of  opportunity  is  to  bring  them  "within  the  range"  of 
their  better  leadership.  Their  ignorance  involves  their 
isolation.  Their  isolation  represents  not  their  own 
helplessness  alone  but  the  helplessness  —  in  reference  to 
themselves  —  of  those  higher  forces  within  their  race 
which  are  organizing  the  mental  and  spiritual  condi 
tions  of  its  growth,  fixing  the  direction  of  its  aspirations, 
and  shaping  the  nobler  policies  of  its  segregation.  To 
give  the  masses  of  the  ignorant  into  the  shepherding  of 
their  better  leaders  is,  in  itself,  —  though  the  fuller 
reaches  of  education  may  necessarily  be  long  delayed,  — 
so  to  broaden  the  basis  and  the  constituency  of  the  race's 
higher  life,  that  the  growing  passion  of  its  selfhood, 
the  clearer  vision  of  its  identity  and  its  peace,  become  — 
though  afar  off  —  the  possessions  of  the  people. 

The  education  of  the  multitude  thus  strengthens  the 
tendencies  represented  in  the  education  of  the  few. 
Education  is  the  process  by  which  the  irresponsible  are 
bound  into  the  life  of  the  responsible.  It  is  the  means 
by  which  a  people,  socially  weak  and  organically  un 
conscious  of  a  collective  life,  is  changed  from  a  mob  into 
a  society,  —  from  an  incoherent  aggregation  of  petty 
groups  finding  a  bewildered  and  futile  life  under 
ignorant  leaders,  to  one  inclusive,  coherent  group,  re- 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY    113 

sponsive  to  the  better  leadership  and  the  larger  policies 
of  the  race.  If  the  curse  of  the  blacks  lies  in  the  ig 
norant  power  of  their  petty  leaders,  in  church  or  lodge, 
it  is  because  their  masses  have  never  been  brought 
within  the  power  of  what  is  best  in  the  race's  life. 
There  can  be  no  dethronement  of  bad  leaders  except 
through  the  enthronement  of  good  ones,  and  there  can 
be  no  enthronement  of  the  good  until  a  more  generally 
distributed  elementary  education  has  bestowed,  among 
the  people,  a  capacity  to  understand  and  an  opportunity 
to  follow. 

It  is  true  that  popular  education  will  sometimes 
subject  them  to  the  advice  of  educated  demagogues 
(a  peril  not  escaped  by  the  people  of  stronger  races), 
but  it  will  also  introduce  them  to  capacities  which  will 
enable  them  to  test  that  advice  upon  its  merits,  will 
subject  them  to  the  counter-arguments  of  truer  leaders, 
will  draw  them  up  into  those  sobering  processes  of 
feeling  and  reflection  which  always  attend  the  enlarging 
life  and  the  growing  responsibility  of  social  groups. 
A  more  efficient  organization  of  negro  life  will  bring  its 
risks,  but  the  risks  of  intelligent  organization,  with  the 
natural  divisions  which  intelligence  will  involve,  are 
as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  morbid,  brutal,  un 
reasoning  solidarity  that  has  so  frequently  prevailed. 
After  all,  the  only  way  to  civilize  men  is  to  introduce 
them  into  civilization.  Those  who  think  that  the  edu 
cated  negro  leader  is  a  more  dangerous  guide  for  his 
people  than  the  ignorant  preacher  of  the  cross-roads, 
are  probably  comparing  our  present  educated  negro 
leadership  at  its  worst,  with  the  old  cross-roads  preacher 
at  his  best.  The  average  educated  leadership  among  the 


ii4  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

negroes  of  to-day  may  be  bitter,  but  it  is  not  irrespon 
sible.  The  irresponsible  are  few.  But  our  uneducated 
negro  leadership  —  having  none  of  the  old  affectionate 
relations  with  the  educated  opinion  of  the  stronger  race 
—  is  irresponsible  as  well  as  bitter.  There  can  be  no 
breaking  of  its  power  except  through  that  enlargement 
of  the  scope  and  the  efficiency  of  education  which, 
bringing  the  masses  of  the  race  within  the  contact 
of  its  better  minds,  will  break  both  the  power  of  the 
ignorant  and  the  bitterness  of  the  wise.  The  same  fate 
which  has  kept  the  many  in  darkness  has  kept  the  few 
in  bitterness;  the  giving  of  the  sheep  to  the  shepherd 
is,  in  a  sense  poignant  and  evident  and  inexorable,  the 
saving  of  both. 

For  it  is  not  merely  true  that  there  would  be  less  bitter 
ness  among  our  educated  negroes  if  there  were  less  to 
be  bitter  about,  but  it  is  well  to  remember  that  a  large 
factor  in  the  distress  and  confusion  of  their  experience 
is  that  baffling  ignorance  in  the  masses  of  their  race 
which  is  largely  the  basis  of  its  incapacity  to  follow 
anybody  anywhere.  Education  will  not  instantly  avail. 
The  educated  do  not  at  once  make  more  intelligent 
followers  (or  leaders)  than  the  ignorant.  The  first 
effect  of  education  in  any  social  group,  whether  among 
the  poor  of  Russia  or  among  the  negroes  of  America, 
will  be  distracting  and  divisive.  There  must  be  ex 
perience  also;  and  education  is  a  necessity  not  as  a 
substitute  for  experience,  but  because  as  it  touches  the 
capacities  of  apprehension,  of  memory,  of  comparison, 
it  is  the  one  force  which  makes  experience  available. 

But  through  a  popular  education  that  leads  into  a 
freer  experience  and  through  an  experience  to  which 


viz    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY    115 

education  can  contribute  its  standards  and  its  discipline, 
the  vague,  shifting,  inchoate  masses  of  an  ignorant  and 
unresponsive  negro  life  may  be  slowly  drawn  into  the 
sway  and  order  of  its  better  minds.  There  will  be 
factions  and  parties;  they  exist  to-day.  There  will  be 
radicals,  conservatives,  opportunists;  they  are  found  in 
every  national  or  social  group.  But  there  will  be  one 
race,  conscious  not  only  of  its  race  but  of  its  oneness, 
able  to  judge  and  fitted  to  follow,  —  as  its  leaders  suffer 
and  endure  and  lead.  The  tug  and  strain  of  an  answer 
ing  popular  life,  the  tightening  cords  of  an  efficient 
fellowship,  will  bring  to  their  abler  leaders  that  joy 
which  is  the  sovereign  remedy  for  social  madness  — 
the  sobering  sense  of  definite  responsibility,  a  sense  of 
responsibility  deepening  and  broadening  within  them  as 
though  responsive  to  the  elective  ordination  of  a  vast 
ecclesia,  and  imposing  those  common  obligations  which 
give  to  every  leadership  its  finer  sanity  and  its  ultimate 
steadiness. 

To  give  to  the  negro  leader,  even  when  "  unsafe," 
a  larger  and  more  intelligent  constituency,  will  do  more 
than  anything  else  to  make  a  man  of  him.  Nothing 
educates  a  leader  so  thoroughly  or  so  conservatively, 
whether  in  the  Church,  the  State,  or  "the  labor  union," 
as  to  give  him  responsibility  and  to  put  a  constitu 
ency  at  his  back.1  It  is  an  education  not  only  in  cau 
tion,  but  in  power.  It  saves  one  from  that  sense  of 
despair  in  which  our  futilities  confuse  us  by  their  multi 
tude  and  betray  us  by  their  irrelevancy.  But  when 

1  See  "The  Social  Unrest,"  by  John  Graham  Brooks,  Chaps.  X 
and  XI,  on  the  conservative  results  produced  in  the  socialistic  forces 
of  Germany  by  the  gradual  accession  of  responsibility;  The  Mac- 
millan  Company,  New  York,  1903. 


n6  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

we  must  act  for  others,  when  the  fate  of  thousands  is 
dependent  on  us,  their  needs  enter  into  us  and  add 
through  strange  and  subtle  infiltrations  their  light  and 
reason  to  our  own,  —  giving  to  us  their  deeper  insist 
ence  or  their  corrective  truth,  and  enabling  us  by  virtue 
of  their  fuller  experience  to  divide  the  irrelevant  from 
the  immediate  and  the  specious  from  the  good. 

Stronger  even  than  that  power  which  is  the  sense  of 
power,  is  the  bond  of  that  renewed  acceptance  which 
is  found  in  the  sense  of  popular  cooperation.  It  gives 
to  every  leadership  its  highest  satisfactions,  —  for  as 
the  leader  chooses,  in  the  interest  of  his  multitudes, 
the  pathways  of  the  common  progress,  he  himself, 
through  their  very  progress  in  these  pathways,  is 
chosen  anew  as  the  expressive  instrument  of  their  ad 
vance.  Their  every  step  is  a  new  acceptance  of  de 
cisions  which  he  has  made,  a  new  suffrage  to  powers 
which  he  has  gained.  And  their  choosing  of  him  means, 
and  will  mean  always,  his  choosing  of  them : — they  have 
heard  him  and  have  answered;  they  have  approved  his 
strength  and  have  crowned  his  gifts.  To  his  freedom 
and  his  peace  they  are  forever  necessary,  for  their  life 
has  been  the  form  and  the  forum  of  his  self-expression. 
Though  they  may  misunderstand  him  and  betray  him, 
theirs  are  the  crude  endeavors  and  the  hoarse  voices 
which  have  moved  within  him  as  the  imperious  sanc 
tions  of  his  combat,  his  combat  for  self-conquest  and 
self-development ;  by  those  instincts  of  inarticulate  need 
through  which  they  have  been  bound  to  him  he  has 
been  bound  to  them.  They  are  his  people. 


vii    THE  INTEGRATING  FORCE  OF  OPPORTUNITY    117 


IV 

The  deeper  influences  now  at  work,  therefore,  upon 
the  negro  race  —  both  from  without  and  from  within  — 
are  operating  as  the  forces  of  integration.  From  with 
out,  the  reemergence  of  Africa  is  likely  to  be  followed 
by  two  results:  in  the  stronger  race  by  an  impulse 
of  recoil  from  any  possible  tendencies  toward  negro 
amalgamation;  in  the  weaker  race  by  the  broader  and 
deeper  self-consciousness  of  the  negro  group. 

These  external  forces  operating  upon  both  races 
toward  the  creation  of  a  closer  but  higher  segregation 
of  the  negro  group,  are  coincident  with  the  inward 
movement  of  its  own  experience  as  reflected  in  its 
educational  development.  It  has  gained  the  school  of 
its  self-discovery  in  that  finding  of  itself  which  educa 
tion  inevitably  imposes,  as  well  as  in  the  new-found 
significance  of  the  larger  negro  world.  The  education 
of  its  leadership  has  involved  an  increasing  rather  than 
a  decreasing  consciousness  of  race,  due  partly  to  the 
force  of  pressure  from  without,  but  due  also  to  the  in 
creasing  sufficiency  and  the  deepening  responsibilities 
of  its  heritage  from  within.  As  the  race's  identity  has 
become  self-chosen,  its  integrity  has  been  more  deeply 
and  more  securely  founded.  The  gradual  inclusion  of 
the  negro  masses  within  the  scope  and  promise  of  the 
educated  world  is  slowly  bringing  them  within  the  hori 
zon  of  a  common  fellowship,  is  binding  them  into  the 
conscious  destiny  of  a  race  choosing  —  not  a  para 
sitic  —  but  an  individual  career,  and,  by  the  very  need 
and  progress  of  its  multitudes,  rewarding  and  annexing, 


n8  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  vn 

upbuilding,  reenforcing  and  reabsorbing  the  higher  and 
freer  capacities  of  its  leadership.  It  is  the  old,  old 
story  of  the  need  of  power  upon  the  one  side,  and  the 
power  of  need  upon  the  other. 


THE   FATE   OF   THE   STRONG 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    FATE    OF    THE    STRONG 


THE  sympathy  which  our  world  has  given,  and  has 
rightly  given,  to  the  negro  of  these  Southern  States 
should  not  be  permitted  to  obscure  the  situation  of  the 
stronger  race.  All  may  readily  observe  the  suffering 
of  the  poor  man  of  the  streets.  The  man  who  is  not 
upon  the  streets,  whose  lot  is  not  familiarly  associated 
with  any  of  the  external  conditions  of  misfortune,  is 
not  observed  so  easily.  Indeed,  he  is  seldom  observed 
at  all.  Walled  about  by  the  privacies  of  his  business 
or  of  his  household,  he  is  shut  within  the  precincts  of 
an  instinctive  or  deliberate  reserve. 

The  negro,  associated  through  slavery  with  the  out 
ward  conditions  of  misfortune,  and  still  burdened  with 
the  natural  legacy  of  unequal  powers,  has  stood  clearly 
within  the  view  of  a  considerate  public  interest.  Not 
that  that  interest  has  ignored  the  stronger  race,  and  yet 
here,  too,  its  response  has  been  due  to  the  external  chal 
lenge  of  obvious  occasions  —  to  the  tragedies  of  war, 
to  the  poverty  of  the  masses,  to  the  humiliations  of 
reconstruction,  to  the  burdens  of  political  insecurity. 
But  the  deeper  aspects  of  our  fate  are  little  known;  they 
are  not  often  pondered  even  by  ourselves.  Like  the 
shadowy  backgrounds  of  social  tradition  or  personal 
assumption,  they  lie  within  us  as  the  forces  of  our  kinship 
with  one  another  rather  than  as  our  explicit  challenge 

121 


122  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

to  the  interest  or  sympathy  of  the  world.  Of  these  we 
seldom  speak.  We  sometimes  half  believe  them  to  be 
forgotten  until,  in  the  sharp  shock  of  some  definite 
occasion,  or  on  a  journey  into  other  scenes,  or  in 
some  silent  moment  of  self-revelation,  the  fate  of  our 
divided  land  flashes  its  significance  upon  us.  Our 
States,  our  communities,  our  neighborhoods,  are  the 
abode  of  white  and  black :  ours  is  a  world  of  inexorable 
divisions;  divisions  deeper  than  inclination,  or  will, 
or  habit  can  express;  divisions  not  of  race  alone  but  of 
race  conjoined  to  strength  upon  the  one  hand,  and  to 
weakness  upon  the  other.  Here  the  strength,  with 
whatever  individual  exceptions,  lies  upon  one  side; 
the  weakness  — •  with  whatever  exceptions  — •  lies,  as  a 
whole,  upon  the  other.  The  stronger  race  must  live, 
must  find  and  equip  and  free  itself,  must  rear  its  children, 
—  thronged,  environed,  influenced,  profoundly  deter 
mined  by  the  weaker. 

A  weak  group  of  a  like  race  would  present  one  prob 
lem,  a  strong  group  of  a  different  race  would  present 
another;  but  here  in  one  group  are  peculiarly  repre 
sented —  as  within  an  enfolding  world  of  unceasing 
contact  —  the  weaknesses  against  which  our  climatic 
tendencies  have  instinctively  forewarned  us  and  the 
race  from  which  our  social  heritage  and  our  political 
history  have  most  sharply  divided  us. 

The  very  fact  that  the  one  peril  has  been  as  inevitable 
as  the  other,  and  that  the  division  has  proven  at  times 
as  ineffective  as  the  forewarning,  has  but  added  to  the 
torture  and  the  burden  of  our  conditions.  Those  who  live 
within  a  different  scene,  who  conduct  the  simple  trans 
actions  of  daily  life  as  members  of  a  homogeneous  racial 


vni  THE  FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  123 

group,  naturally  enough  do  not  immediately  or  easily 
perceive  the  pressure  and  significance  of  our  situation. 

Industrially,  it  is  imperative  that  the  weaker  group 
should  preserve  itself  from  exploitation  at  the  stronger' s 
hands,  but  it  is  quite  as  imperative  that  the  stronger 
group  should  preserve  itself  from  those  tendencies 
toward  exploitation  which  are  constantly  invited  by  the 
very  presence  of  the  weaker.  There  is  nothing  more 
perilous  to  the  normal  standards  of  social  feeling  than 
the  presence  of  a  large  and  distinctive  class  of  a  closely 
related  population  too  ignorant  and  too  weak  to  protect 
itself.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  case  of  such  a  popula 
tion  should  appeal  to  the  chivalry  of  the  strong.  And 
so  it  should. 

And  so  it  does.  It  is  well  known  among  us  that  the 
chief  burdens  of  the  negro  are  economic  rather  than 
political;  and  that  he  suffers  more  from  discrimina 
tion  in  trade  than  from  discrimination  against  his  suf 
frage.  The  appeal  to  chivalry,  to  the  protecting  kind 
liness  of  the  stronger  race,  has  found  response.  Its 
story  —  the  daily,  hourly  offices  of  a  disinterested 
friendship,  —  the  strong  leaving  their  own  business 
and  giving  of  their  own  time  in  order  to  protect  the 
weak  from  the  cupidity  of  the  "loan-shark,"  from  the 
pitfalls  of  the  "  mule  market,"  or  from  the  legal  conse 
quences  of  their  own  frailty  —  is,  though  so  homely  in 
its  occasions,  a  chapter  of  varied  and  recurrent  interest. 
I  know  of  nothing  simpler  or  happier  in  the  history 
of  race  relations.  But  the  task,  in  its  magnitude,  is 
overwhelming.  Chivalry,  like  every  other  quality  of 
social  life,  has  its  quantitative  limit.  There  is  not 
enough  to  go  round.  In  no  actual  or  conceivable  human 


i24  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

society  can  one  class  in  the  population  universally  and 
efficiently  assume  the  task  of  protecting  another  class 
against  the  consequences  of  its  helplessness.  I  do  not 
know  that  it  would  altogether  be  best  for  the  weaker  if  it 
could.  The  stronger  class  is  bound  to  do  its  utmost, 
through  every  legitimate  institutional  provision,  to  aid 
the  weaker  in  ceasing  to  be  helpless;  but  it  must  con 
front  the  fact  that  institutional  processes  are  slow,  and 
that  in  the  long  period  of  delayed  development  it  will 
find  within  its  own  life  (no  matter  what  the  quarter  of 
the  world  in  which  the  scene  is  laid)  the  tendencies  that 
would  exploit  as  well  as  the  tendencies  which  protect, 
the  men  of  self-interested  trade  as  well  as  the  men  of 
a  disinterested  chivalry.  Education  is  long;  its  own 
numbers  are  divided. 


II 

As  the  South  becomes  "  modern, "  industrial,  cos 
mopolitan,  —  as  the  familiar  affections  of  slavery-days 
no  longer  preserve  the  personal  touch  between  race  and 
race,  the  impulse  of  the  old  chivalry,  even  among  the 
few,  is  modified  both  by  custom  and  by  preoccupation. 
But  the  weaknesses  of  the  weak  persist.  Here  are 
constant  invitations  to  fraud,  to  discriminations,  —  lavish 
opportunities  for  the  cynical  and  the  brutal.  The  chief 
sufferer  is  not  the  weaker  group,  but  the  group  thus 
afforded  a  rich  support  for  its  coarser  elements  and  its 
lower  tendencies  —  elements  and  tendencies  which  a 
normal  and  homogeneous  life  might  more  effectively 
dislodge  or  modify.  Low  standards  in  the  services 
rendered  by  the  negro  to  the  community  are  not  so 


vni  THE  FATE  OF  THE  STRONG  125 

serious  as  the  low  standard  of  the  service  he  exacts: 
low  grades  of  goods,  cheap,  adulterated  qualities  of 
food,  poor  houses  at  high  rents,  petty  loans  at  extor 
tionate  interest,  top-heavy  mortgages  that  embitter  the 
victim  and  harden  the  heart  of  the  lender;  —  a  con 
stituency,  which,  however  innocently,  will  float  the  less 
efficient  or  less  creditable  element  thrown  off  from  the 
commercial  or  professional  life  of  the  stronger  group; 
the  declining  merchant  annexing  a  negro  trade,  the 
discredited  lawyer  annexing  "negro  business."  This  is 
not  to  say  that  negro  business,  professional  or  commer 
cial,  is  necessarily  discreditable;  many  of  our  honored 
men  in  medicine,  or  at  the  bar,  or  in  banking  and  mer 
chandise,  have  always  had  a  negro  clientele,  but  they 
have  not  selfishly  specialized  in  that  direction.  They 
have  not  served  the  negro  because  he  lacked  standards 
of  expectation  or  because  they  could  cheat  him  with  little 
effort  or  rob  him  with  little  danger.  Yet  their  old  and 
honorable  service  to  him  has  found  its  competition,  — 
its  competition  at  the  hands  of  those  who  promise  more 
and  perform  far  less. 

For  how  inevitable  it  is  that  the  type  and  standard 
of  the  demand  should  largely  determine  the  type  and 
standard  of  the  supply,  and  how  inevitable  that  that  de 
mand  and  that  supply  should  act  and  react  upon  each 
other  not  in  mechanical  detachment  from  society  as  a 
whole,  but  in  subtle  organic  relation  to  the  factors  of  all 
demand  and  of  all  supply,  —  in  labor,  in  trade,  in  the 
professions,  in  every  department  of  our  reciprocal  in 
dustrial  relations.  A  low  saloon  instituted  for  the 
"nigger  trade"  is  entered  also  by  the  lower  elements  of 
the  white  population,  competes  therefore  with  the  white 


i26  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

saloon,  and  pulls  in  the  direction  of  its  economic  and 
moral  level  every  saloon  within  the  city;  street-car  ac 
commodations,  public  facilities  of  every  type,  even  the 
sanitary  conditions  of  our  public  buildings,  have  a  ten 
dency  to  seek  the  average  level  of  the  community-demand, 
—  a  level  affected  automatically  by  ignorance  in  every 
class,  but  especially  affected  by  the  serious  proportions 
of  the  weaker  race.  The  penal  system  of  the  State, 
morally  indefensible  as  it  is,  punishes  every  white 
prisoner,  and  every  prisoner  of  every  grade,  with  a 
penalty  more  serious  than  the  duration  of  his  term  (the 
penalty  of  the  very  nature  of  the  institution)  by  reason 
of  the  fact  that  the  whole  system  was  naturally  con 
ceived  in  reference  to  the  disproportionate  criminality 
of  the  population  which  would  inevitably  become  the 
chief  subjects  of  its  restraint.  Those  who  imagine  that 
the  only  curse  has  fallen  upon  the  negro  know  little  of 
the  reactive  power  of  institutional  provisions. 

It  is  to  this  point  that  I  would  again  and  again  re 
turn.  That  the  negro  is,  as  a  class,  ignorant  and  weak, 
that  he  enters  upon  his  relations  with  the  stronger  group 
upon  such  terms  as  the  stronger  may  impose,  seems,  upon 
a  superficial  view,  a  situation  of  peril  to  the  negro.  But 
the  deeper  peril  is  to  the  life  of  the  strong  —  low  eco 
nomic  standards  opening  the  way  for  our  economic 
vices,  low  intellectual  standards  yielding  prizes  to  the 
promptings  of  the  charlatan,  low  moral  standards 
offering  perpetually  an  occasion  for  pity  but  an  occasion 
also  for  lust  —  in  the  young,  the  untried,  the  weak,  as 
well  as  in  the  brutally  depraved ;  —  an  enfolding  and 
ever-waiting  world  of  opportunity  for  darker  tenden 
cies,  a  world  unlike  that  of  any  other  weaker  social 


vin  THE   FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  127 

group  because  the  group  itself  is  relatively  so  large  and 
because  its  weakness  is,  in  its  total  mass,  so  abnormally 
disproportionate  to  its  strength. 

For  a  stronger  group  to  be  involved  in  such  conditions 
is  to  be  subjected  to  something  more  than  the  "pull" 
of  deteriorating  forces.  It  is  to  be  subjected  to  an 
atmosphere.  No  man,  except  the  peculiarly  strong  and 
great,  is  at  his  best  when  habitually  dealing  with  forms 
of  manhood  lower  than  his  own.  The  context  draws 
him  into  its  phrases.  He  responds  to  the  hourly  press 
ure  of  his  social  contact.  The  very  vehemence  of 
his  reaction  from  the  negro,  in  manner  and  desire, 
is  the  assertive  instinct  of  his  self-preservation,  as  it 
struggles  with  the  slow,  remorseless  logic  of  his  situation. 
He  will  not  become  the  negro,  but  as  little  will  he  —  in 
the  freer  and  higher  forms  of  his  social  heritage  —  be 
come  adequately  himself.  And  what  is  true  of  the 
man,  except  under  conditions  which  I  shall  attempt 
later  to  define,  is  true  also  of  his  race.  Every  efficient 
class  in  living  and  effectual  contact  with  a  class  less 
efficient  than  itself  inevitably  bestows  upon  the  weaker 
some  measure  of  its  efficiency  as  a  gift,  and  receives 
from  the  weaker  some  meagre  of  its  inefficiency  as  a 
burden.  Thus  do  the  strong  bear  the  infirmities  of  the 
weak.  A  class  which  is  too  ignorant  and  too  weak  to 
protect  itself  has  at  least  escaped  the  fate  of  that  greater 
peril  in  which,  sometimes,  the  strong  become  themselves 
defenceless  against  their  own  disintegrating  forces. 

Ill 

But,  it  will  be  surely  urged,  the  negro  is  really  not 
too  weak  to  protect  himself.  His  helplessness  is  arti- 


i28  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

ficial  rather  than  real.  Give  him  politically  the  in 
strument  of  his  self-protection  —  put  the  ballot  in  his 
hands  —  and  you  have  preserved  the  weaker  race  from 
despair  and  the  stronger  from  itself.  It  should  not  be 
necessary  again  to  analyze  the  fallacy  involved  in  the 
assumption  that  there  is  any  necessary  protection  to  the 
negro  in  a  universal  and  unrestricted  suffrage.1  Nor 
need  I  again  dwell  at  length  upon  the  truth  that  in  a 
restricted  suffrage  there  should  obtain  —  as  between 
race  and  race  —  a  level  and  impartial  equity  both  of 
law  and  administration.2  And  yet  were  the  laws  as  to 
the  suffrage  always  equal  both  in  their  letter  and  their 
application,  and  were  the  suffrage  universal  as  well 
as  wholly  unrestricted,  it  would  still  be  important  to 
remember  that  the  ballot  as  a  social  power  is  —  ex 
cept  in  organic  relation  to  other  forms  and  expressions 
of  service  and  efficiency  —  no  constructive  social  in 
strument.  With  it  or  without  it  the  political  status 
of  any  social  group  will  tend  to  conform,  substantially, 
to  its  general  economic  and  social  position  in  the 
life  of  the  State.  With  the  ballot  —  as  with  the  other 
forms  of  social  self-expression  —  men  do  what  they  are; 
you  may  rescue  them  from  everything  except  them 
selves.  And  human  nature  being  everywhere  sub 
stantially  the  same,  and  our  formal  political  procedure 
being  what  it  is,  a  stronger  class,  determined  to  pre 
vail,  has  always  at  its  command  for  effective  use  the 
one  element  that  remains  constant  amid  all  the  vari 
ous  exigencies  of  the  political  struggle  —  the  element 
represented  by  the  weaker  class  itself.  This  class, 

1  See  p.  18,  of  this  volume. 

2  See  pp.  194,  195,  of  the  author's  "The  Present  South." 


vin  THE   FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  129 

with  its  persisting  limitations,  is  one  of  the  fixed 
factors  of  the  situation:  laws  may  change,  State  ad 
ministrations  may  come  and  go,  national  parties  rise 
and  fall,  but  —  within  the  local  scene  —  the  weak 
themselves  remain,  in  the  contact  of  group  with  group, 
as  the  supreme  instrument  of  the  strong. 

In  a  Southern  State  with  which  I  am  familiar,  the 
State  Legislature  had  ordered  a  popular  vote  upon  the 
question  "Shall  a  Constitutional  Convention  be  called 
together?"  The  declared  purpose  of  the  proposed 
Convention,  as  announced  by  the  dominant  party,  was 
the  disfranchisement  of  the  negro  voters.  The  negroes 
of  one  of  the  more  important  counties  of  the  State, 
stirred  by  their  popular  leaders,  took  an  unusual 
course  and  decided  to  vote  upon  the  issue.  As  the 
blacks  in  this  particular  county  outnumbered  the 
whites  by  more  than  two  to  one,  there  was  a  measure 
of  consternation  among  some  of  the  members  of  the 
stronger  race.  The  local  "boss"  of  the  Convention- 
forces  showed,  however,  no  perturbation  of  mind.  The 
sample  ballots  were  printed  and  circulated  in  advance, 
as  custom  ordered.  They  were  in  the  familiar  form. 
Upon  the  unoffending  slip  there  were  but  two  lines,  one 
at  the  top  reading  "For  the  Constitutional  Convention," 
and  the  other  at  the  bottom,  reading  "Against  the  Con 
stitutional  Convention."  The  negro  leaders  secured 
the  blank  tickets  as  soon  as  distributed,  and  proceeded 
from  group  to  group,  and  from  meeting  to  meeting,  to 
instruct  the  masses  of  their  illiterate  voters.  The 
directions  were  simple.  They  were  rehearsed  over  and 
over  till  copy-perfect:  "Put  the  cross  at  the  end  of  the 
bottom  line!" 


130  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

The  election  was  held.  The  negroes  in  illiterate 
hundreds  marched  solemnly  into  the  booths  and 
marked  their  ballots.  The  ballots  were  freely  voted 
and  fairly  counted.  There  was  no  violence,  no  de 
struction  of  ballot-boxes,  no  irregularity,  no  fraud. 
And  yet  it  was  immediately  obvious  that  a  county  with 
a  preponderant  black  majority  had  gone  overwhelm 
ingly  for  the  Convention.  How  was  it  done  ?  —  The 
local  boss  of  the  Convention-forces  had  merely  advised, 
in  a  quiet  way,  that  the  official  ballots  distributed  at 
the  booths  be  passed  out  to  the  voters  upside  down. 

The  illiterate  negro  voters  had  put  the  cross,  accord 
ing  to  their  instructions,  at  the  end  of  the  bottom  line. 
When  upside  down  the  top  line  —  as  they  surveyed  it  — 
was  at  the  bottom,  the  bottom  line  at  the  top.  In  their 
activity  to  record  their  disapproval  they  had  recorded 
their  approval;  and  the  negro  masses,  without  coercion 
and  without  the  manipulation  of  the  returns,  had  ex 
plicitly  voted  in  behalf  of  a  movement  for  their  own 
disfranchisement ! 

The  incident  is  vividly  suggestive  rather  than  liter 
ally  typical  ;  and  yet  it  is  illustrative  of  a  situation 
which  under  one  form  or  another  is  perpetually  re 
current.  Ignorance  cannot  be  protected  against  it 
self.  Under  the  forms  of  free  democratic  procedure, 
the  politically  weak  cannot  be  stayed  from  delivering 
themselves,  by  one  method  or  another,  into  the  hands 
of  the  politically  strong.  In  the  political  relations  of 
two  groups  —  one  representing  approximately  the 
elements  of  actual  power,  the  other  the  elements  of 
actual  and  obvious  weakness  —  the  forms  of  a  free 
democracy  are  the  very  forms  through  which  the  will 


viii  THE  FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  131 

of  the  strong  is  the  more  likely  to  find  its  almost  un 
modified  expression. 

One  might  naturally  assume  that  the  weaker  the  group 
the  greater  its  opportunity  in  a  democracy,  for  the  gov 
ernmental  assumption  of  democracy  is  supposed  to  be 
the  value  of  the  individual;  but  democracy,  as  we  have 
it,  has  political  regard  not  to  individuals,  but  to  aggre 
gates  ;  it  yields  nothing  —  except  as  a  second  thought  — 
even  to  minorities;  its  governmental  policies,  its  ad 
ministrative  processes,  are  expressed  through  the  domi 
nant  aggregate.  The  majority  is  usually  the  form  not 
through  which  the  individual  rules,  but  through  which 
he  abdicates.  It  may  be  apotheosized  as  the  collective 
individual,  but  the  individual  is  so  lost  in  the  mechanical 
processes  of  associated  action  that  when  government 
begins,  the  Collection  becomes  everything  and  the  in 
dividual  becomes  nothing ;  the  man  is  submerged  in  the 
State.  Under  no  form  of  political  organization  is  a 
minority  so  helpless  or  the  individual  so  insignificant 
as  in  that  particular  formulation  of  democracy,  that 
exaggerated  enthronement  of  merely  temporary  majori 
ties,  with  which  we  are  familiar.  Its  evils  are  in 
cident  to  the  South  only  because  they  are  common  to 
our  country  as  a  whole. 

The  weaker  social  group,  not  divided  among 
different  parties,  but  ranged,  through  tragic  historic 
blunders,  as  a  race-party  against  a  race-party  repre 
sented  by  a  stronger  group,  is  necessarily  condemned, 
therefore,  not  simply  to  learn  its  lessons  through  defeat 
alone,  but  to  find  itself  almost  without  representation 
in  our  local  administrations.  It  should  be  remem 
bered,  moreover,  that  the  weaker  group  —  under  exter- 


i32  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

nal  leadership  —  has  represented  the  earlier  organization 
of  a  race  into  a  race-party;  the  stronger  race-party 
was  in  its  origin  defensive.  The  white  man's  race- 
party  found  its  precedent  and  justification  in  the  race- 
party  of  the  black  man.  Yet  the  weaker  is  now  the 
defensive  and  the  defeated.  Not  only  is  it  prevented 
from  sharing,  alternately,  in  success  and  failure,  but 
it  is  found  locally  in  the  position  of  formal  organiza 
tion  against  that  social  and  political  aggregate  which 
represents  the  forces  of  ultimate  social  strength,  and 
which  possesses  in  its  hands  —  and  will  necessarily 
continue  to  possess  —  the  instruments  and  the  ma 
chinery  for  the  attainment  of  our  political  decisions. 
The  invalidation  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  this  or  that 
detail  in  any  local  constitution  of  this  or  that  particular 
State  would  be  almost  insignificant  in  its  effect.  The 
arbitrary  prevalence  of  race,  the  absolute  political 
control  of  the  stronger  group,  is  not  solely  dependent 
for  its  expression  upon  any  isolated  technical  device. 
The  fate  of  the  strong  is  their  strength.  Were  one 
device  invalidated,  another,  within  a  few  weeks,  could 
be  established.  In  control  of  every  formal  instrument 
of  social  or  governmental  self-expression,  the  stronger 
group,  under  that  aspect  of  itself  as  a  race-party  which 
its  history  has  imposed,  will  continue  to  identify  itself 
with  the  very  being  of  the  State;  and  the  cogency 
of  its  contention  —  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  local 
basis  of  the  opposing  party  continues  to  lie  within  the 
masses  of  a  weaker  and  politically  unpractised  race  — 
will  naturally  mark  the  measure  of  its  intolerance. 
For  the  State,  being  temporarily  but  the  administrative 
form  of  the  dominant  aggregate,  rejects  the  weaker 


vm  THE  FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  133 

group  as  a  factor  of  its  self-destruction.  The  one 
group  representing  en  bloc  the  efficiency  of  society, 
and  the  other  representing  en  bloc  its  inefficiency 
(there  being  relatively  no  normal  division  of  weakness 
and  power  between  them),  the  stronger  becomes  so 
habituated  to  the  conception  of  itself  as  identical  with 
the  State  that  arbitrary  processes  instinctively  tend 
to  dominate  and  to  express  the  methods  of  our  politi 
cal  procedure. 

And  it  could  hardly  be  otherwise.  No  weaker  social 
group  exercising  the  ballot  as  a  group  and  voting  as 
a  group-party  has  ever  been  otherwise  dealt  with  by  any 
stronger  social  aggregate.  And  yet  the  natural  limi 
tations  of  the  weaker  group,  serious  as  they  are  in  ref 
erence  to  its  own  development,  are  more  serious  still 
in  their  reaction  upon  society  as  a  whole. 

I  have  dwelt  sufficiently  upon  the  insidious  effect  of 
arbitrary  methods  to  indicate  that  the  recognition  of 
their  inevitable  rise  involves  no  approval  of  a  per 
manent  policy  based  upon  them.  As  the  instances 
of  arbitrary  method  have  arisen,  it  would,  however, 
require  a  wise  judge  infallibly  to  divide  the  indefensible 
from  the  defensible.  Many  of  the  privileges  destroyed 
by  them  were  less  important  to  both  races  and  to  society 
as  a  whole  than  the  privileges  which  were  preserved. 
But  the  indefensible  were  abundant.  And  yet  were 
all  such  methods  indefensible,  we  may  well  remember 
that  we  have  not  yet  interpreted  with  insight  or  with 
justice  the  problems  of  any  situation,  whether  per 
sonal  or  social,  when  we  have  found  a  mistake  or 
accurately  labelled  an  iniquity.  The  deeper  questions 
still  remain.  How,  our  average  human  nature  being 


i34  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

as  it  is  and  things  being  as  they  were,  could  our  situa 
tion  have  been  otherwise  ?  If  certain  actions  or  policies 
were  not  necessary,  by  what  strange  fate  of  nature,  or 
deception  of  circumstance,  did  men  come  to  believe 
them  so?  If  men  were  deluded  into  a  sense  of  peril, 
by  what  national  solicitude  of  their  more  favored 
countrymen  was  their  rescue  from  delusion  —  so 
important  to  themselves  and  to  their  whole  society  - 
attempted  and  commended?  If  they  were  the  victims 
of  obsession,  how  arose  this  obsession  ?  —  from  no 
fact  in  their  situation,  from  no  unfamiliar  crisis, 
from  no  industrial  catastrophe,  from  no  social  or  moral 
shock,  from  no  close  or  abnormal  association  with  un 
tried  and  ominous  conditions  ?  If  they  were  stark  mad, 
is  madness  a  self-chosen  state  of  intellectual  or  social 
ease?  Is  not  its  suffering  as  real,  the  torture  of  its 
delirium  as  pathetic  and  as  poignant,  as  the  alarm  and 
the  pain  of  sanity?  We  have  not  explained  a  situation 
or  dismissed  its  difficulties  when  we  have  found  some 
one  to  blame. 

IV 

The  fact  was  there  before  us,  flashing  as  once  flashed 
the  sword  of  the  Archangel  at  the  gateways  of  our 
Peace,  —  the  fact  that  into  the  old  estate  of  its  security 
and  its  pride  the  South  could  not  return.  It  must 
blaze  its  way,  yoked  unwillingly  within  a  strange 
fellowship,  through  untried  directions  into  a  new 
world.  That  each  yoke-fellow  should  sin  against  the 
other  was  as  inevitable  as  that  each,  at  times,  should 
show  a  happier  will,  —  and  help.  That  they  have 
arrived  at  all,  has  been  chiefly  due,  just  as  inevitably, 
to  the  stronger 's  power. 


viii  THE   FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  135 

Yet  every  necessary  or  unnecessary  injustice  of 
either  has  reacted  chiefly  upon  itself.  Every  ingrati 
tude  of  the  weaker  has  deepened  that  instinct  for 
grievances  which  has  added  a  faculty  for  unhappiness 
to  unhappiness  already  great.  Every  brutality  of  the 
strong  has  just  so  far  embruted  its  spirit,  has  just  so 
far  inclined  its  life  to  depend  upon  force  rather  than 
upon  reason :  every  political  deception  has  decreased 
our  intolerance  of  indirection,  has  made  more  diffi 
cult  the  methods  of  wholesome  political  procedure  and 
postponed  still  further  that  sound  political  rehabilita 
tion  which  has  been  the  deepest  aspiration  of  our  social 
progress.  And  waiting  within  these  delays,  touched  and 
pressed  upon  by  every  spectacle  of  violence,  by  the 
standards  of  familiar  feeling,  by  the  assumptions  of  our 
public  opinion,  by  the  atmosphere  of  our  factional  dis 
cussions  and  of  our  average  journalism,  lie  —  as  within 
the  educative  forms  of  their  culture  and  their  happi 
ness  —  the  children  of  the  South. 

Their  fate  is  but  the  more  serious  form  of  ours.  It 
is  a  fate  which  no  living  man  has  sought,  which  no 
living  man,  conscious  of  his  obligation  to  his  people 
and  to  the  future,  would  willingly  desert.  And  yet 
its  remedies,  largely  lying  in  the  creation  of  an  intel 
lectual  and  political  freedom  which  shall  become  the 
instrument  of  a  constructive  criticism,  are  naturally 
delayed  by  the  very  conditions  which  demand  redress. 
Yet  these,  too,  we  have  not  chosen;  they,  rather,  have 
chosen  us. 

They   are   the   conditions   which   naturally   or   un 
naturally,    rationally    or    irrationally,    have    arisen  - 
historically    and    actually  —  from    the    very    presence 


136  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  the  weaker  group,  —  a  group  weak  enough  for  its 
power  to  be  despised,  and  yet  strong  enough  for  its 
weaknesses  to  be  feared;  so  unexacting  in  its  demands 
that  its  standards  of  consumption  are  more  depressing 
than  its  standards  of  production ;  so  much  in  need  as  to 
be  an  occasion  of  compassion,  yet  so  persistently  con 
joined  with  the  great  power  of  a  political  party  thus  far 
locally  inimical  to  reputable  government  as  to  be  an 
occasion  of  aggravation  and  suspicion ;  so  easy,  however, 
to  cajole  and  to  coerce  that  its  presence  has  tempted 
into  prominence  the  lowest  forces  of  our  political  capac 
ity,  and  yet  so  effective  through  defeat,  so  impossible  — 
by  reason  of  its  potential  peril  and  its  external  alliances 
-  finally  to  compose,  that  the  mere  persistence  of  its 
presence  has  driven  many  of  the  abler  forces  of  our 
political  wisdom  into  an  attitude  of  silence  and  inaction. 
We  now  and  again  have  imagined  we  were  free,  that  the 
negro-spectre  was  really  laid.  But  in  an  instant  some 
fatuous  threat  of  an  arbitrary  political  intrusion  from 
without,  or  some  revolting  occasion  of  local  crime,  has 
again  given  into  the  hands  of  the  party  demagogue  (or 
into  the  hearts  of  the  sincerely  timid)  a  new  opportunity 
for  the  "realism"  of  political  obfuscation. 

Men  have  called.it  a  "double"  burden.  Yet  it  is 
more  than  one  problem  added  to  the  weight  and  exi 
gency  of  another.  It  is  one  plus  another,  and  plus 
all  the  complexities  and  anxieties  created  by  their 
mutual  interaction.  Are  we  concerned  with  questions 
of  legislation  ?  They  must  be  conceived  both  as  prob 
lems  of  regulation  and  as  problems  of  race;  for,  as 
the  forms  of  restriction  which  affect  one  class  of  the 
population  often  bear  but  slightly  on  the  experience 


viii  THE   FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  137 

of  the  other,  the  task  of  equalization  involves  the  strong 
in  the  temptations  of  injustice  and  the  weak  in  the 
temptations  of  retaliation  and  discontent.  Are  we 
concerned  as  to  the  development  of  our  labor?  Our 
division  lies  not  only  between  the  skilled  and  the  un 
skilled,  but  between  race  and  race;  the  one  —  with 
instinctive  solicitude  —  too  jealously  guarding  the 
monopoly  of  its  skill;  the  other  —  with  abnormal  in 
difference  —  too  patiently  insensitive  to  the  appeal  of 
industrial  ambition.  Do  questions  concern  us  as  to 
the  distribution  of  our  labor  ?  The  great  black  masses 
of  the  untrained  are  withheld,  by  racial  and  climatic 
tendencies,  from  the  normal  movements  of  the  general 
labor  market  of  the  country;  the  rest  of  the  country 
does  not  want  them  and  can  hardly  use  them:  we 
ourselves  want  them,  but  the  incursion  of  white  laborers 
which  we  also  want  is  checked  by  the  very  conditions 
which  demand  relief.  Are  we  concerned  with  the  tasks 
of  popular  education?  Long  after  we  have  decided 
the  question  as  to  whose  taxes  support  the  negro  school, 
the  instinctive  popular  reluctance  to  make  public  ex 
penditures  which  must  include  the  blacks  (a  reluctance 
which,  however  unjust,  any  average  white  population, 
North  or  South,  has  usually  manifested  in  the  presence 
of  negro  masses)  will  long  prevent  the  development  of 
such  adequate  facilities  for  general  education  as  are 
demanded  by  every  interest  of  the  stronger  race.  Our 
white  children  must  suffer,  and  do  daily  suffer,  by 
reason  of  the  absence  of  such  a  system  as  could  have 
come  far  more  readily  into  existence  among  a  homo 
geneous  people.  We  have  our  public  schools.  Their 
recent  progress  is  among  the  happier  evidences  of  our 


138  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

popular  sanity  and  capacity.  But  their  inadequacies 
are  part  of  the  social  cost  of  a  situation  which  under 
every  aspect  of  our  development  has  made  of  our  eating 
and  drinking,  our  buying  and  selling,  our  labor  and 
housing,  our  rents,  our  railroads,  our  orphanages  and 
prisons,  our  recreations,  our  very  institutions  of  religion, 
a  problem  of  race  as  well  as  a  problem  of  maintenance. 
Yet  the  price  is  one  which,  in  so  far  as  it  has  contributed, 
not  morbidly  or  speciously  but  really,  to  our  protection, 
to  the  conservation  and  integrity  of  the  stronger  race, 
has  been  not  a  tithe  too  great.  The  very  dignity  and 
necessity  of  the  dogma  of  our  protection  has  drawn, 
inevitably,  some  of  the  basest  of  our  factions  and  im 
pulses  to  seek  shelter  and  excuse  beneath  its  aegis. 
This  has  been  the  sorest  burden  of  the  cost.  Yet, 
whatever  its  weight  or  its  distractions,  —  rather  than 
endure  the  alternative,  rather  than  the  further  race 
deterioration  which  an  absence  of  all  divisions  must 
have  invited,  we  would  have  met  it  a  hundred  fold.  To 
be  blind,  however,  to  its  penalties  is  a  price  which  we 
cannot  pay.  The  fate  of  it  has  visited  us  with  a  poverty 
immeasurable  in  the  terms  of  money.  Its  burden  is 
of  the  general  mind. 

An  abnormal  absorption  in  the  issues  of  race  has 
tended  to  make  real  politics  impossible  to  a  people  who, 
historically,  have  always  possessed  peculiar  political 
efficiency;  it  has  tended  to  denationalize  the  most 
instinctively  national  of  American  localities  and  to 
dehumanize  (in  the  philosophical  sense)  a  section 
which  has  temperamentally  represented  an  element 
the  most  humanitarian  and  the  most  transcendental 
in  our  American  experience.  The  weaker  group  has 


vin  THE   FATE   OF  THE   STRONG  139 

suffered  like  the  stronger.  Because,  however,  the 
stronger  is  the  stronger,  dominating  and  chiefly  repre 
senting  the  thought  and  being  of  society,  its  injury 
is  the  more  serious,  its  fate  the  more  tragic  in  its  con 
sequences  to  itself,  the  negro,  and  the  nation.  In 
the  whelming  and  absorbing  turmoil  of  the  struggles 
between  race  and  race  —  struggles  which  in  our  his 
tory  have  represented  the  very  issues  of  social  order  — 
what  opportunity  has  existed  within  the  popular  con 
sciousness  for  the  larger  (and  enlarging)  politics  of 
humanity  —  for  the  issues  of  national  taxation,  of 
public  administration,  of  American  trade  and  of  our 
international  relations  ? 

The  shadow  and  the  burden  of  such  a  situation  in 
the  education  of  our  youth,  in  the  development  of  sound 
intellectual  and  social  standards,  are  indescribable. 
It  has  been  a  fate  of  tragic  preoccupation.  Not  re- 
belliously  or  bitterly,  but  wistfully,  and  with  the  real 
sadness  of  the  patriot,  an  older  friend  once  said  to  me: 
"I  think  I  love  my  country;  and  yet  its  general 
interests  and  its  common  life  have  been  forced  into 
the  background  —  are  far  away.  I  sometimes  feel 
that  I  have  ceased  to  be  the  citizen  of  my  country,  and 
have  become,  instead,  but  the  citizen  of  a  race." 


THE  EDUCATIVE  POWER  OF  SOCIAL 
REACTIONS 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   EDUCATIVE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS 


IN  so  far  as  so  abnormal  a  situation  is  the  result  of 
sectional  or  political  antipathies  from  without,  there 
should  be  little  question  as  to  the  nature  of  the  na 
tional  response.  Its  spirit  should  touch  with  healing 
discrimination  the  tense  nerve  of  an  exaggerated  con 
sciousness  of  race.  To  threaten  anew  or  to  seem  to 
threaten  (subjectively  they  are  equivalent)  the  security 
of  the  stronger  group,  is  but  to  intensify  the  reaction 
of  the  stronger  against  the  weaker,  and  to  delay  the 
popular  acceptance  of  national,  unstrained  assumptions 
of  feeling  and  opinion. 

Upon  the  other  hand,  to  touch  this  scene  as  though 
the  nation  were  indifferent,  is  as  unfortunate  as  to 
touch  it  as  though  the  nation  were  intolerant.  That 
would  be  indeed  to  assume  that  the  citizen  of  the  South 
has  no  country;  would  deny  to  him  the  tonic  breath, 
which,  sweeping  from  regions  less  troubled  by  his  pro 
vincial  fever,  is  quick  with  the  vigor  of  varied  aims, 
free  with  the  broad  vitality  of  American  emulation, 
and  wholesome  with  the  power  of  our  national  horizons. 
Such  a  relegation  of  the  South  to  the  fate  of  its  peculiar 
tasks  would  involve  but  the  larger  deliverance  of  its 
life  to  the  stifling  preoccupations  which  have  threatened 
it,  would  call  still  further  into  exercise  and  influence 
the  leadership  which  defines  its  policies  exclusively 


i44  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

in  the  terms  of  racial  conflict,  and  would  intensify  an 
isolation  in  which  we  should  be  forced  to  bear  alone  the 
burden  of  economic  evils  for  which  we  were  not  alone 
responsible.  Either  an  intolerance  toward  the  South 
which  would  exaggerate  its  consciousness  of  the  weaker 
group  within,  or  an  indifference  which  would  weaken 
its  consciousness  of  the  larger  group  without,  would  be 
no  service  to  humanity.  But  that  personal  and  fra 
ternal  touch  which  might  slowly  dissolve  the  sharper 
accentuations  of  our  sectional  development,  which 
might  prove  the  spirit  of  our  greater  country  to  be  not 
intolerant  nor  indifferent  but  aware,  would  —  like 
some  finer  soul  of  policy  within  our  politics  —  relax 
the  taut,  rigid  faculties  of  negation  and  alarm,  dis 
perse  the  crude  leadership  which  has  expressed  them, 
and  release  —  as  from  the  bondage  of  old  nightmare  — 
those  capacities  of  varied  opinion  and  of  free  achieve 
ment  which  make  the  meaning  and  the  distinction  of 
every  true  political  society. 

It  is  not  sufficient  to  retort  that  the  racial  security 
of  the  stronger  group  has  been  established.  That, 
at  length,  is  true.  But  something  waits  —  now  attain 
able,  and  yet  still  to  be  attained.  For  that  through 
which  men  achieve  the  finer  power  of  freedom  is  the 
sense  of  security  rather  than  security.  Though  not 
possessing  security,  men  —  through  the  sense  of  security 
-  have  been  known  to  rear  their  empires  into  security 
and  permanence;  other  men,  though  possessing  secur 
ity,  have  been  known  —  under  some  haunting  sense 
of  insecurity,  under  some  strange  obsession  of  old 
and  habitual  fear  —  to  wait,  to  doubt,  to  divide,  to  fail. 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  145 

To  this  sense  of  security  the  South  would  come. 
The  task,  whatever  the  disposition  of  forces  outside 
the  South,  must  at  last  be  chiefly  hers.  No  one  can 
conquer  for  her,  or  ultimately  bestow  upon  her,  that 
estate  of  her  own  mind  in  which  she  may  permanently 
found  the  stability  and  the  expression  of  her  happier 
life.  She  could  not  ask  it  if  she  would,  she  would  not 
if  she  could.  Already  in  the  zeal  and  fertility  of  her 
new  industrial  development,  in  the  vigor  of  her  educa 
tional  renewal,  in  the  social  and  political  transforma 
tions  by  which  the  masses  of  the  stronger  race  are  for  the 
first  time  sharing  the  perils  and  developing  the  capacities 
of  collective  action,  she  is  shaping  the  freer  forms  of 
her  self-possession.  There  is  much  of  confusion :  there 
will  be  more  ere  there  is  less.  There  are  conflicting 
counsels  as  well  as  divided  and  dividing  aims.  There 
will  be  delay,  stupidity,  reaction,  wrong.  But  it  is  a 
great  fight;  the  greatest  in  its  elemental  significance 
that  our  country  has  yet  known,  and  all  the  greater 
and  all  the  more  significant  because  its  methods  are 
not  military  —  with  their  hardening  reaction  upon  the 
more  varied  dispositions  and  sensibilities  of  men  —  but 
the  freer  methods  of  our  institutional  and  social  self- 
expression.  Of  the  result,  soon  or  late,  no  man  can 
doubt.  But  in  order  that  it  may  come  earlier  rather 
than  later,  and  that  it  may  assume  stronger  rather  than 
weak  and  ineffectual  forms,  the  South  —  with  something 
more  of  conscious  direction  —  will  take  her  own  part 
against  the  weakening  obsessions  which  have  beset  her. 

In  so  far  as  an  exaggerated  consciousness  of  race  is  de 
pendent  —  as  is  largely  the  case  —  upon  the  mere  local 
contiguity  of  two  such  racial  masses,  it  is  to  the  ad- 


i46  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

vantage  of  our  every  interest  that  the  relative  numerical 
proportions  of  the  weaker  group  should  be  reduced. 
The  general  effect  of  education  will  itself  be  distributive 
in  its  tendencies,  breaking  up  congestion  at  this  point 
or  that,  and  putting  a  more  varied  labor  in  intelligent 
relations  with  a  more  varied  market.  But  it  is  to  the 
immigration  of  a  larger  white  population  that  we  must 
look  for  still  greater  measures  of  relief,  —  a  relief  de 
manded,  indirectly,  by  the  situation  of  the  negro  as 
well  as  by  the  situation  of  the  white  man.  The  pro 
portionate  reduction  in  the  numerical  mass  of  the  negro 
population  will  slowly  tend  to  develop  in  the  stronger 
race  both  a  larger  sense  of  security  and  a  larger  sense 
of  discrimination.  Not  only  will  the  white  man  in 
becoming  more  sure  of  his  own  security  become  in 
creasingly  ready  to  promote  a  sense  of  security  among 
our  negroes,  but  this  increasing  sense  of  security  among 
the  negro  population  will  sensibly  deepen  and  broaden 
the  foundations  of  its  thrift.1 

1  "Among  the  secondary  causes  which  determine  the  productive 
ness  of  productive  agents,  the  most  important  is  Security.  By  se 
curity  I  mean  the  completeness  of  the  protection  which  society  affords 
to  its  members.  .  .  .  The  efficiency  of  industry  may  be  expected 
to  be  great,  in  proportion  as  the  fruits  of  industry  are  insured  to  the 
person  exerting  it;  and  all  social  arrangements  are  conducive  to 
useful  exertion  according  as  they  provide  that  the  reward  of  every 
one  for  his  labor  shall  be  proportioned  as  much  as  possible  to  the 
benefit  which  it  produces.  .  .  .  All  laws  or  usages  which  favor 
one  class  or  sort  of  persons  to  the  disadvantage  of  others;  which 
chain  up  the  efforts  of  any  part  of  the  community  in  pursuit  of  their 
own  good,  or  stand  between  those  efforts  and  their  natural  fruits 
are  (independently  of  all  other  grounds  of  condemnation)  violations 
of  the  fundamental  principles  of  economical  policy ;  tending  to  make 
the  aggregate  productive  powers  of  the  community  productive  in  a 
less  degree  than  they  would  otherwise  be.  .  .  ."  John  Stuart  Mill, 


ix  THE   POWER   OF  SOCIAL   REACTIONS  147 

A  larger  knowledge  of  other  classes  of  labor  than 
negro  labor  will  develop  in  the  white  population  a 
clearer  sense  of  discrimination.  The  employer  will  see 
that  many  of  the  bad  qualities  of  negro  labor  are  not 
due  peculiarly  to  the  fact  that  the  laborer  is  a  negro,1 

"Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  Bk.  I,  Chap.  VII,  Sec.  6. 
See  also  "The  Principles  of  Economics,"  by  A.  Marshall,  Professor 
of  Economics  in  Cambridge  University,  England,  as  quoted  on  p.  xiv 
of  the  preface  to  this  volume.  It  has  seemed  appropriate  to  refer  to 
the  monographs  of  Marshall  and  Mill,  not  because  these  authorities 
had  reference  to  the  American  negro,  but  because  they  had  not;  and 
because  it  frequently  happens  that  the  deficiencies  of  the  negro  are 
viewed  out  of  all  relation  to  the  human,  fundamental  conditions 
which  so  largely  determine  the  development  of  the  familiar  economic 
virtues. 

1  "I  think  that  no  amount  of  immigration  —  however  large  it  may 
be  —  will  make  it  wise  for  this  section  of  the  South  to  dispense  with 
much  of  the  labor  it  now  has.  As  our  industrial  development  pro 
ceeds,  we  shall,  I  think,  find  use  for  the  old  labor  as  well  as  the  new. 
In  some  fields  of  activity  the  negroes  will  be  displaced.  This  dis 
placement  is  now  going  on.  But  the  negro  who  disappears  at  one 
point  in  our  industrial  system  often  reappears  at  another.  He  adapts 
himself  to  the  changed  conditions. 

"While  the  South  is  thus  likely  to  use  all  her  labor,  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  a  marked  increase  in  immigration  will  be  of  decided  ad 
vantage  to  both  races.  Both  races  need  a  more  varied  labor  situation. 
It  is  always  unfortunate  for  one  whole  class  to  have  a  monopoly  as 
employers,  and  for  another  totally  distinct  class  to  possess  a  monopoly 
as  employees.  The  negro  laborer  should  have  the  bracing  competition 
of  white  labor.  It  will  increase  his  moral  steadiness  and  deepen  his 
sense  of  responsibility. 

"While  the  prevalence  of  higher  standards  will  help  the  white 
employer,  the  new  labor  will  also  enable  the  employer  to  become 
familiar  with  other  workers  besides  the  negro.  He  will  find  that 
many  of  the  negro's  faults  are  not  the  faults  of  the  negro  as  a  negro, 
but  that  they  belong  to  other  labor  also.  Some  of  the  negro's  failings 
are  peculiar  to  himself,  but  many  of  them  belong  to  every  race  in  the 
same  industrial  position.  The  man  on  a  dollar  a  day  is  not  necessarily 


i48  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

and  yet  that  to  the  fact  that  he  is  a  negro  is  due  much 
of  the  abundance  and  tranquillity  of  our  agricultural  pro 
duction.  Upon  the  other  hand,  the  negroes  themselves 
will  find  that  many  of  their  grievances  against  the  South 
are  grievances  which  have  their  basis  —  in  so  far  as  they 
are  real  —  in  nothing  peculiar  to  the  South,  nor  in  any 
thing  peculiar  to  the  white  man  as  a  white  man,  but 
in  the  temperamental  and  habitual  tendencies  of  the 
employer  as  an  employer,  particularly  under  simple 
agricultural  conditions.  Few  things  illustrate  this  more 
clearly  than  the  fact  that  the  negroes  of  the  North  show 
no  predisposition  to  seek  employment  at  the  hands  of 
the  employers  among  their  own  race.  The  greater 
diversification  of  our  Southern  industrial  experience, 
-  the  more  national  distribution  of  the  negro  popula 
tion,  and  a  more  general  white  immigration  —  will 
show  to  each  race  some  of  the  less  obvious  excellences 
of  the  other,  will  illustrate  to  each  the  merely  economic 
basis  of  many  of  their  respective  misunderstandings, 
and  will  confer  upon  both,  through  the  social  reactions 
called  into  play,  a  freer  opportunity  and  a  larger  ca 
pacity  for  discrimination. 

industrious,  grateful,  well-mannered,  and  faithful  to  his  contracts  just 
because  he  happens  to  be  white.  Immigration  will  give  us  a  more 
varied  industrial  situation  in  which  the  negro  will  be  subjected  to  a 
more  rigid  economic  test,  but  in  which  his  qualities  can  be  judged  more 
fairly  in  relation  to  other  labor  working  under  the  same  climatic  con 
ditions."  From  an  interview  by  the  author  published  in  the  Ad 
vertiser,  Montgomery,  Ala.,  April  12,  1906.  A  fuller  discussion  of 
immigration  and  the  labor  question  at  the  South  is  to  be  included 
in  his  later  volume,  "  Issues,  Southern  and  National." 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  149 

II 

The  diversification  of  our  labor  situation  will  be  in 
part  the  cause  and  in  part  the  result  of  the  diversifica 
tion  of  our  economic  situation  as  a  whole.  The  per 
sistent  monotony  of  our  agricultural  employments  — 
with  its  inevitable  consequences  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  our  rural  communities  —  is  partly  due  to  the  re 
cently  abnormal  price  of  a  single  staple ;  a  price  which, 
through  the  unusual  profits  upon  our  cotton,  has  too 
far  absorbed  our  activity  in  the  production  of  our  one 
easiest  crop.  The  margin  of  our  immediate  returns 
has  been  large ;  the  results,  especially  as  contrasted  with 
the  poverty  of  the  preceding  period,  have  been  grate 
ful.  It  seems  fatuous,  therefore,  to  question  the  evi 
dent  basis  of  monetary  gains  which  have  added  so  con 
siderably  not  merely  to  the  standards  of  comfort,  but  to 
the  wider  distribution  of  education.  And  yet  we  can 
hardly  afford  to  forget  that  while  education  may  follow 
from  the  actual  possession  of  cash  and  from  the  sheer 
capacity  to  spend,  yet  the  profounder  education  of  men 
springs  even  more  directly  from  the  educative  force  of 
the  processes  of  production.  Production,  rather  than 
consumption,  is  the  school  of  capacity.  Great  peoples 
are  educated  by  what  they  are  making  and  doing  rather 
than  by  what  they  are  spending.  Under  the  challenge 
and  variety  of  the  creative  forms  of  its  self-expression, 
every  human  society  finds  its  great  elemental  univer 
sity.  Intellectual  resourcefulness,  intellectual  freedom, 
ease,  efficiency,  and  force,  are  largely  but  the  social  re 
action  from  the  field  of  a  varied,  exacting,  and  therefore 
interesting,  labor. 


150  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

There  was  a  former  day  when  men  said  that  "Cotton 
is  King ; "  but  the  kingship  of  cotton  involved  the  South 
in  a  depressing  economic  system,  an  economic  system 
which  could  not  have  existed  —  such  are  the  ironies  of 
history  —  but  for  that  invention  of  the  conscientious 
New  Englander  which  broadened,  by  a  thousand  fold, 
the  market  both  of  the  staple  and  of  the  slave.  What 
thus,  at  the  initial  point  of  cotton-manufacture,  was  ac 
complished  by  the  genius  of  Whitney,  is  now  being  ac 
complished,  upon  its  mechanical  and  commercial  side, 
by  innumerable  agencies  of  invention  and  distribution. 
Whitney's  contribution  of  the  cotton-gin  was  but  the 
single  precedent  of  a  complex  and  bewildering  process. 
Since  his  day  the  fundamental  problem  of  the  utilization 
of  the  cotton  staple  has  engaged,  with  ever  increasing 
rewards,  its  thousands  of  experts  in  mechanics  upon 
the  one  hand,  and  its  thousands  of  experts  in  distribu 
tion  upon  the  other.  The  responding  and  enlarging 
market  is  so  great,  both  intensively  in  the  increasing 
variety  of  its  uses,  and  extensively  in  the  range  of  the 
territory  of  its  purchase,  that  there  is  now  no  price  which 
the  world  will  not  pay  to  the  South  for  keeping  ever 
lastingly  at  work  upon  its  cotton. 

The  world  may  pay  the  price,  but  it  is  well  to  remem 
ber  that  the  South  —  if  it  follow  the  temptations  of 
economic  preoccupation  —  will  have  to  pay  the  cost. 
Indeed,  from  a  strictly  material  standpoint,  the  absorp 
tion  of  the  South  in  the  mere  growing  of  the  one  simple 
staple  will  at  length  cut  us  off  from  the  enjoyment  of  its 
largest  profits,  —  the  profits  of  its  manufacture ;  and  our 
excessive  concentration  of  interest  and  land  upon  a 
single  raw  material  will  so  increase  our  dependence  upon 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  151 

other  sections  for  the  more  varied  necessaries  of  life 
and  comfort,  that  the  sectional  independence  which 
we  may  have  coveted  as  the  reward  of  our  larger  income 
will  be  lost  in  the  economic  tutelage  which  our  "  pros 
perity"  will  create.  So  long,  moreover,  as  one  vast 
interest  is  so  dominant  among  us,  we  deliberately 
narrow  the  basis  of  our  economic  safety.  A  calamity 
to  this  one  staple,  to  the  product  itself,  or  to  the  factor 
of  price,  tends  to  involve  our  whole  industrial  estate 
in  a  common  peril.  The  strength  of  every  sound 
economic  situation  lies  in  that  complexity  and  variety 
of  the  common  industrial  and  agricultural  production 
under  which  a  surplus  at  one  point  may  equalize  a 
deficit  at  another. 

Thus  our  economic  security  as  well  as  our  economic 
freedom  are  not  less  dependent  than  our  intellectual 
progress  upon  our  relative  emancipation  from  the  an 
cient  "King."  The  tyranny  of  cotton  in  the  older 
period  seemed  to  be  a  tyranny  over  the  slave,  but  it  was 
really  a  tyranny  over  the  South.  It  might  to-day,  but 
for  that  modification  of  its  dominion  which  I  believe 
to  be  in  process,  extend  and  fortify  a  tyranny  over  the 
South,  not  less  exacting,  though  perhaps  less  obvious, 
than  the  old.  Our  remedy  will  lie  not  necessarily  in 
less  cotton,  but  in  more  of  other  things;  and  if  we  can 
not  have  more  of  other  things  without  having  less  cotton 
—  then,  whatever  the  losses  of  apparent  but  superfi 
cial  income,  less  cotton !  It  may  be  that  less  cotton 
will  mean  more  of  cotton-money  (the  reduction  of  the 
supply  involving  a  still  higher  price) ;  it  may  be  that 
this  higher  price  will  increase  the  economic  temptation 
to  the  breaking  point,  and  will  bring  under  cultivation 


152  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

a  still  larger  acreage  of  now  implanted  lands,  and  so 
still  produce  —  more  cotton.  Round  and  round,  there 
fore,  may  the  vicious  circle  go.  And  from  it  there  is 
no  escape,  except  for  the  personal  South,  individually 
if  not  collectively,  to  cut  straight  through  it,  —  to  re 
solve  that  the  supreme  question  shall  be  neither  more 
cotton  nor  more  money,  but  more  life;  and  that  no 
product,  however  great,  which  by  the  excessive  absorp 
tion  of  the  human  elements  of  power  —  through  the 
over-occupation  of  the  child  in  the  factory  or  the  pre 
occupation  of  the  farmer  in  his  fields  —  threatens  our 
essential  intellectual  and  industrial  wealth,  can  be  left 
wholly  to  the  play  of  merely  economic  forces.  Our 
abandonment  of  our  monopoly  I  do  not  advise;  our 
abandonment  to  our  monopoly  would  be  but  the  de 
livery  of  our  strength  to  selfishness  without,  and  to 
stupidity  at  home. 

And  yet  such  a  declaration,  though  qualified  with 
exact  and  abundant  caution,  will  seem  to  the  average 
"man  on  the  street"  and  to  the  political  economist  of  the 
older  school,  like  "talking  back  at"  the  law  of  gravita 
tion.  It  will  seem  as  profitless  as  reading  a  homily  to 
the  Equator.  There  is,  however,  nothing  more  signifi 
cant  in  the  history  of  modern  states  than  the  increasing 
economic  appreciation  of  the  factor  of  will.  Modern 
Germany  is  largely  the  result  of  the  deliberate  social 
control  of  economic  conditions ;  peoples  are  everywhere 
entering  upon  the  courses  of  their  progress  through  that 
factor  of  selective  choice  by  which  they  are  consciously 
substituting  the  higher  for  the  lower  forms  of  wealth. 
Many  a  community  will  pay  me  more  money,  whether 
as  a  day  wage  or  as  an  annual  salary,  to  dig  in  its  streets 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  153 

than  to  teach  in  its  schools,  and  the  economic  oppor 
tunity  presented  in  the  streets  may  be  more  constant 
than  that  offered  in  the  schools;  but  my  economic 
response  will  be  determined  by  forms  of  interest  and  by 
a  standard  of  values  which  money,  in  itself,  cannot 
express.  If  I  enter  a  factory,  there  may  be  an  economic 
demand  for  me  to  work  fourteen  hours  instead  of  ten, 
and  it  may  be  that,  in  a  lifetime,  I  can  make  more 
money  by  working  each  day  for  the  fourteen  hours; 
but,  here  again,  the  fundamental  question  is  not  the 
money  nor  the  time,  but  the  life  itself,  the  quality  and 
fulness  of  my  human  experience  as  an  individual: 
this,  then,  is  the  new  "preferred  wealth"  of  the  world. 

It  is  a  force  —  this  factor  of  selective  choice,  of  con 
scious  determination  in  the  economic  response  of  in 
dividuals  and  peoples  —  which  economists  have  never 
really  ignored,  but  the  meaning  of  which  they  are  com 
ing  increasingly  to  appreciate.  Its  popular  recognition 
will  come  more  slowly.  The  man,  however,  who  now 
chooses  a  ten-hour  rather  than  a  fourteen-hour  day  - 
deliberately  in  the  interest  not  of  more  money  but  of 
more  life  —  would,  fifty  years  ago,  have  seemed  as 
exceptional  as  the  contemporary  farmer  who  deliber 
ately  chooses  an  educative  rather  than  an  uneducative 
crop.  For  the  individual  instances  of  so  explicit  and  so 
conscious  a  choice  may  be  rare,  but  one  can  see  —  over 
the  broad  and  general  scene  —  an  increasing  tendency 
toward  diversification,  a  tendency  resting  naturally 
enough  at  first  upon  the  more  obvious  practical  ad 
vantages  of  a  more  varied  agriculture,  but  slowly  sug 
gesting  a  recognition  of  its  larger  economic  and  social 
basis.  The  recognition  of  this  basis  need  not  obscure 


154  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  immediate  advantages  of  such  a  course  —  indeed,  a 
policy  of  diversification  is  a  policy  not  merely  of  social 
satisfactions,  but  of  material  success;  but  the  larger 
popular  appreciation  of  such  a  policy  will  increase  the 
volume  and  the  quality  of  the  conscious  cooperation 
which  should  be  everywhere  accorded  it.  Its  value  lies 
not  merely  in  its  direct  returns,  whether  intellectual  or 
financial,  so  much  as  in  the  educative  and  constructive 
force  of  the  social  reactions  which  the  South  must 
receive  into  her  life  from  a  freer,  larger  world  of  more 
varied  interests  and  occupations.  While  our  activities 
are  quickened  and  multiplied  by  our  schools,  and  while 
it  is  thus  true  that  to  educate  is  to  diversify,  it  is  just 
as  profoundly  true  that  to  diversify  is  to  educate. 

Ill 

Every  population,  however,  finds  the  basis  of  its 
reactions  not  merely  in  its  industrial  employments,  but 
in  its  human  relations.  The  environment  of  every 
conscious  life  is  necessarily  social  as  well  as  economic. 
Under  the  activities  and  habits  of  personal  or  collective 
contact  men  find  those  forms  of  their  social  and  political 
self-expression  through  which  they  not  only  create  their 
social  wealth  and  their  common  institutions,  but  through 
which  they  educate  themselves  and  one  another.  Every 
individual  in  conscious  contact  with  things  gets  an 
educative  reaction  from  the  work  he  does;  every  in 
dividual  in  conscious  contact  with  other  individuals 
gets  an  educative  reaction  from  the  souls  he  knows  and 
from  the  relations  he  establishes.  It  is  in  this  sense  that 
every  man  is  educated  by  every  other  man;  for  even 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL    REACTIONS  155 

when  the  one  individual  is  wholly  hidden  from  the  other, 
the  inter-relations  of  men  are  so  subtly  but  indissolubly 
joined  that  the  capacities  or  incapacities,  the  con 
fidences  or  anxieties,  the  sympathies  or  hates  of  one 
man  will  affect  —  through  vast  distances  or  over  the 
more  insuperable  barriers  of  class  —  the  peace  and  the 
fortunes  of  another ;  may  indeed  help  so  to  form  some 
outward  factor  of  his  environment  or  so  to  color  some 
inward  state  of  feeling  or  opinion  as  to  alter  the  choice 
of  policies  or  the  fate  of  character.  The  ignorant  fear 
on  the  part  of  an  Italian  depositor  in  New  York  — 
through  the  social  and  financial  interactions  which  it 
may  call  into  play  —  may  overthrow  the  bank  in  which 
he  has  kept  his  savings ;  the  failure  of  that  bank  may 
so  affect  the  conditions  of  public  confidence  as  to 
disturb  the  exchanges  of  the  country  and  involve  the 
institutions  of  Minneapolis  or  New  Orleans,  —  a  ca 
tastrophe  which,  in  turn,  may  leave  the  cotton  or  the 
wheat  of  thousands  to  rot  within  their  fields.  Upon 
the  other  hand,  a  small  deposit  made  in  a  single 
city  at  one  bank  by  the  right  man  at  a  particular  mo 
ment  may  save  the  bread  of  millions.  In  each  case  the 
factor  of  deeper  significance  is  not  the  immediate  ca 
tastrophe  or  the  external  rescue,  nor  the  instant  emotional 
effect  of  each,  but  the  less  obvious  play  of  the  educative 
forces  released  and  discharged  into  the  social  organism 
by  every  factor  within  its  limits.  Long  after  the  money, 
whether  lost  or  gained,  has  been  forgotten,  the  social 
"  state-of-mind "  induced  by  each  of  these  men,  in  turn, 
will  be  affecting  —  and  to  that  extent  educating  —  the 
life  of  communities  and  of  states. 

Such  incidents  are  but  crude  illustrations  of  the  truth 


156  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

that  the  individual  man,  in  this  world,  may  escape  almost 
every  calamity  or  deliverance  except  that  which  comes 
in  the  form  of  other  men.  And  this  at  last  —  for  the 
strong  upon  the  one  hand,  or  the  weak  upon  the  other  — 
is  the  unescapable  education.  The  reactions  of  social 
contact  —  from  individual  to  individual  —  are  so  fre 
quently  neutralized  by  one  another  that  the  significance 
of  particular  impressions  or  of  single  incidents  is  some 
times  inappreciable.  But  the  more  frequent  these  im 
pressions,  and  the  more  these  incidents  are  given  the 
power  of  mass  and  the  authority  of  numbers,  the  more 
profound  and  inevitable  their  consequences.  It  is 
for  this  reason,  as  well  as  for  the  reason  that  each  dis 
tinctive  group  naturally  possesses  —  where  the  internal 
demarcations  of  society  are  conspicuously  drawn  —  a 
certain  group-consciousness,  or  collective  mind,  that 
the  interactions  of  class  upon  class,  and  particularly 
of  race  upon  race,  possess  a  significance  so  formidable 
and  so  pervasive. 

It  may  at  first  appear  that  an  isolated  member  of  a 
stronger  group,  dealing  with  the  isolated  member  of  a 
weaker,  receives  no  direct  return.  From  individual 
to  individual  —  in  this  or  that  incident  of  contact  — 
there  may  seem  to  be  no  commerce  over  the  boundaries 
of  race.  Such  transference  of  influence  as  may  be  noted 
is  apparently  from  the  strong  to  the  weak.  The  white 
man  seems  to  be  doing  all  the  educating.  He  seems 
to  be  giving,  the  negro  to  be  receiving.  It  is  easy  to  note, 
even  in  a  single  incident  of  our  race  relations,  how  a 
touch  of  manner,  an  impulse  of  feeling,  or  some  fixed 
assumption  of  thought  may  pass  over  into  the  negro's 
receptive  mind.  For  this  is  the  basis  of  one  of  the  most 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  157 

profoundly  educative  influences  which  operate  upon 
weaker  social  groups  —  the  influence  which  touched 
the  domestic  slave  in  our  older  plantation  life  and  which 
so  frequently  touches,  in  other  latitudes,  those  of  other 
races  or  nationalities  who  are  admitted  into  the  closer 
relations  of  domestic  service.  But  when  the  strong 
man  finds  the  trace  of  the  servant's  speech  in  the 
speech  of  his  child,  he  finds  the  sombre  clue  of  a 
returning  influence.  Here  is  the  symbol  of  a  process 
of  education  which  has  been  reciprocal,  and  which 
stops  not  with  the  child  alone.  That  little  lisp,  that 
flavor  of  dialect,  that  syllable  of  a  lower  language, 
is  but  sign  and  parable  of  a  commerce  of  impressions, 
sentiments,  assumptions  in  which  the  weaker  race  is 
creditor  as  well  as  debtor. 

This  is  the  beginning.  It  does  not,  as  has  been  sug 
gested,  stop  with  youth;  still  less  does  it  stop  (if  the 
exchange  ever  really  ends)  with  the  cessation  of  direct 
impressions.  The  direct  action  of  one  race  upon 
another  is  a  great  power,  but  the  indirect  reactions 
inaugurated  within  the  life  of  each  through  its  habitual 
contact  with  the  other  race  are  a  power  greater  still. 

The  direct  educative  influence  of  the  individual  white 
man  on  the  individual  negro  is  appreciable,  but  the 
changes  which  are  wrought  upon  this  weaker  or  lower 
life  through  the  play  of  the  faculties  of  the  white  man 
upon  the  negro  are  slight  in  comparison  with  the 
changes  slowly  wrought  within  the  white  man's  nature 
by  the  returning  play  of  his  faculties  upon  himself. 
The  fact  of  deeper  significance  is  not  the  mere  pressure 
of  a  lower  standard,  but  his  cumulative  modification 
of  his  own  standards  of  self-criticism  and  self-direction. 


158  THE   BASIS   OK  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

Through  the  conditions  of  his  familiar  contact  with  less 
highly  developed  habits  of  efficiency,  with  forms  of 
will  more  immature  than  his,  he  is  deprived  of  that 
bracing  and  corrective  force,  resident  in  the  standard 
of  his  peers,  which  —  manifesting  itself  within  every 
personal  world  as  one  of  the  higher  forms  of  social  co 
operation  —  is,  in  fact,  the  moral  equivalent  of  com 
petition.  He  may  sin  and  not  die.  His  more  exacting 
expectations  of  himself  are  not  echoed  from  without. 
Of  himself,  as  he  would  prefer  to  see  himself,  there  is  no 
spiritual  mirror.  The  occasional  tendency  to  take  him 
self  at  his  second-best  is  socially  unchecked,  and  both 
his  powers  and  his  inclinations  tend  to  assume  the  forms 
of  approximation  imposed  by  a  life  of  habitual  relation 
ship  with  a  mind  lower  than  his  own.  To  say  that  the 
stronger  tends  to  become  brutal  because  the  weaker  is 
brutal,  or  slovenly  because  the  weaker  is  slovenly,  is  to 
touch  the  process  only  on  its  surface.  The  deeper  fact 
is  not  that  of  imitation,  nor  yet  that  of  contagion.  It 
is  that  tragedy  of  recurrent  accommodations,  of  habitual 
self-adjustment  to  lower  conceptions  of  life  and  to 
feebler  notions  of  excellence,  which  is  nothing  less  than 
education  in  its  descending  and  contractive  forms. 

The  average  man  usually  grows  in  the  direction  of  his 
habitual  approximations.  The  employer  wholly  sur 
rounded  by  ignorant  labor  becomes  practised  in  dealing 
with  ignorance.  The  capacities  in  himself  which 
might  otherwise  find  exercise  and  expression,  the  ca 
pacities  which  intelligent  labor  might  develop,  are  elimi 
nated  or  weakened  by  disuse.  Upon  the  other  hand,  the 
capacities  requisite  for  dealing  with  ignorance  are 
called  constantly  into  play,  gain  strength  from  their 


ix  THE   POWER   OF  SOCIAL   REACTIONS  159 

exercise,  and  become  increasingly  the  forms  through 
which  his  nature  gains  its  self-expression  and  its  self- 
development.  We  tend  to  become  the  things  we  do. 
The  habitual  handling  of  weak  men  forces  into  promi 
nence  in  the  individual  the  faculties  by  which  mere 
weakness  is  controlled,  forces  into  prominence  in  the 
community  the  types  of  mind  —  in  our  representative 
leadership  —  which  are  practised  in  utilizing  the  weak 
nesses  of  a  lower  group  rather  than  in  matching  the 
powers  of  a  vigorous  and  resourceful  opposition. 

Indeed,  it  is  in  the  inter-relations  of  our  racial  masses 
even  more  than  in  the  relations  of  individuals  that  the 
retrogressive  and  contractive  influences  of  the  weaker 
on  the  stronger  have  appeared.  The  saying  that  corpora 
tions  have  no  soul  has  been  declared  to  be  one  form  of 
the  confession  that  collective  ethics  are  lower  than  the 
ethical  standards  of  individuals.  But  the  quality  of 
the  ethical  standard  is  not  the  only  element  of  difference. 
Collective  action  is  the  less  considerate  and  seems  the 
less  sensitive  because  by  its  very  nature  it  lacks  the 
flexibility  of  individual  procedure.  The  weakness  of 
its  formal  processes  is  structural  as  well  as  ethical. 
It  is  sometimes  lacking  in  conscience,  but  it  is  always 
lacking  in  adaptability. 

When,  therefore,  group  comes  to  deal  with  group,  the 
stronger  determines  its  relations  with  the  weaker  under 
the  canons  of  a  collective  necessity  which  put  all  of  the 
white  race  upon  one  side  and  all  of  the  negro  race  upon 
the  other.  This  is  the  situation  within  each  group 
which  checks  the  appreciation  and  neutralizes  the  inter 
racial  influence  of  the  exceptional  individual  within  the 
other,  and  which  will  show  little  change  till  the  motive 


i6o  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  cooperation  enters  more  largely  into  our  racial  policy 
as  well  as  into  our  individual  ethics. 

And  it  is  this  situation  which  neutralizes  the  social 
benefit  —  as  between  the  stronger  and  the  weaker  group 
-  of  personal  criticism  and  intelligent  though  isolated 
opposition.  The  two  groups  are  in  direct  juxtaposition; 
their  interests  are  constantly  assumed  to  be  in  conflict, 
but  between  these  groups  themselves  there  is  about  as 
much  of  the  educative  action  and  interaction  of  op 
posing  forces  as  one  might  find  in  the  carefully  circum 
scribed  relations  of  a  blooded  terrier  and  a  sawdust 
doll.  The  terrier  may  lash  himself  at  times  into  the 
fury  of  inspiring  combat;  may  through  the  intoxications 
of  imagined  insult  vindicate  himself,  in  self-appeasing 
rage,  upon  the  unoffending  partner  of  his  confinement; 
but  the  proceedings  cease  at  last  to  be  interesting  even 
to  himself.  If  the  confinement  is  prolonged  into  the 
years  (a  fate  too  tragic  even  for  the  homely  uses  of 
illustration),  he  will  return — in  recurrent  but  ever 
briefer  moments  of  self-delusion  —  to  the  fierce  practice 
of  his  better  qualities;  but  the  intervals  will  be  longer 
and  the  interest  feebler,  until,  gone  to  waste  in  all  the 
higher  virilities  of  his  breed,  he  at  length  drifts  drowsily 
from  meal  to  meal  into  the  ignominy  of  a  fat  decrepitude. 

The  brute  qualities  of  the  dog  are  not  the  higher 
qualities  of  men;  and  yet  the  illustration  need  not 
obscure  the  normal  dependence  of  our  higher  powers 
upon  the  forces  of  legitimate  opposition.  There  are 
few  things  less  wholesome,  especially  in  the  develop 
ment  of  collective  action,  than  the  effect  upon  a  strong 
group  of  the  divisive  but  ineffectual  contact  of  another. 
I  do  not  assert  that  racial  differentiations  should  always 


ix  THE   POWER    OF   SOCIAL    REACTIONS  161 

and  necessarily  present  the  basis  of  social  or  political 
oppositions,  but  if  they  are  in  fact  coincident  —  if  two 
races  do  stand  opposed  in  thought  or  interest  —  then 
the  presence  of  practically  unchecked  power  upon  one 
side  and  of  a  practically  defenceless  weakness  upon  the 
other  is  more  demoralizing  to  the  strong  than  to  the 
weak.  It  is  not  a  good  thing  for  any  race  to  be  per 
petually  dealing  with  another  race  with  which  it  does 
not  have  to  argue,  which  it  may  control  without  ex 
planations,  for  whom  it  may  think  without  an  attempt 
at  persuasion,  and  for  whom  it  may  act  without  any  real 
partnership  in  responsibility.  For  the  effort  of  a  more 
efficient  group  to  share  responsibility  —  to  include,  by 
free  and  voluntary  processes,  every  common  social 
factor  in  every  common  social  decision  —  forces  the 
conscience  of  the  strong  up  into  finer  forms  of  sensi 
bility  and  discernment,  impels  a  larger  knowledge  of 
human  interests,  and  evokes  both  a  larger  power  of 
intellectual  comprehension  and  a  higher  and  more  com 
plex  political  capacity.  Anybody  can  rule  by  simple 
force.  When  power  is  given,  the  dullest  fool  can  govern, 
—  if  the  whole  of  government  is  to  impose  conformity. 
It  requires  no  political  capacity  outwardly  to  order  all 
men  by  one  man's  will;  but  to  rule  through  their  wills 
too,  to  create,  however  slowly  and  gradually,  a  gov 
ernment  through  men  rather  than  over  them,  is  to  re 
ceive  and  acquire,  in  still  larger  measure,  the  capacities 
we  attempt  to  bestow,  and  is  to  win,  in  ever  stronger 
forms,  the  manhood  for  which  we  provide. 

Indeed,  the  ethical  suggestion,  the  principle  of  social 
deliverance,  which  lies  in  every  truth  and  aspect  of  our 
situation,  we  cannot  escape.  It  is  the  only  protection 


i6a  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  any  strong  man  in  habitual  contact  with  a  weaker; 
it  is  the  only  protection  of  a  strong  race  in  habitual 
contact  with  a  weaker  race.  It  lies  enfolded  within 
every  inadequacy  as  its  contribution  to  social  power. 
It  is  the  gift  found  in  the  hand  of  every  individual 
or  collective  want.  It  is  the  secret  of  social  wealth. 
In  each  weakness  of  every  lower  social  group,  there 
lies  an  opportunity  for  exploitation;  but  in  each  weak 
ness  there  lies  also  an  opportunity  to  help.  You  may 
use  the  weak  man  or  the  weaker  group  in  the  one  way 
or  in  the  other,  and  by  the  nature  of  your  use  of  this  man 
or  this  group  your  capacities  and  faculties  (which  take 
their  qualities  from  use)  are  yielded  to  an  education 
which  assumes  descending  and  contractive  —  or  as 
cending  and  expanding  —  forms.  The  injurious  social 
reactions  caused  in  the  stronger  by  its  contact  with  the 
weaker  can  thus  be  checked  —  and  in  measure  over 
come  —  only  by  the  stronger  modifying  its  revulsions 
by  its  compassions,  and  by  so  admitting  and  utilizing 
the  educative  power  of  its  higher  reactions  as  to  deter 
mine  its  relations  with  the  weaker  under  the  processes 
of  cooperation  rather  than  repression.  Its  own  gradual 
deliverance  springs  from  its  resolution  to  deliver.  Its 
own  dominant  interests  cease  to  be  repressive,  its  larger 
powers  —  freed  from  their  constraining  preoccupation 
in  the  constraint  of  a  weaker  group  —  are  released  into 
the  varied  forms  of  a  larger  activity  and  a  happier  self- 
expression.  And  the  weaker  group  itself,  as  it  tends  to 
rise,  tends  also  to  yield  to  the  stronger  both  the  direct 
cooperation  of  its  growth,  and  the  indirect  cooperation 
of  its  inclusion  within  the  momentum  of  the  general 
progress. 


ix  THE    POWER   OF   SOCIAL    REACTIONS  163 

For,  as  the  stronger  race  withdraws  its  life,  in  its 
contact  with  the  weaker,  from  the  merely  coercive 
or  regulative  forms  of  its  expression,  and  tends  to  yield 
itself  in  larger  measure  to  the  forms  of  cooperative  action, 
it  naturally  finds  the  basis  of  its  approximations  in 
sympathy  rather  than  in  compromise.  Among  the 
social  reactions  excited  by  its  contact  with  the  weaker 
race,  the  higher  now  tend  to  substitute  themselves  for 
the  lower,  and  the  partial  reversal  of  the  tendencies  of 
the  educative  process  gives  to  every  element  of  power  a 
new  quality  of  gentleness  and  a  deeper  touch  of  magna 
nimity.  This  is  the  reason  why,  although  the  average 
man  deteriorates  under  habitual  contact  with  weaker 
groups,  the  exceptional  man  —  in  whom  the  occasions 
of  weakness  have  developed  the  cooperative  rather  than 
the  coercive  instinct  —  is,  whether  alone,  as  was  Liv 
ingstone  in  Central  Africa,  or  submerged  in  the  slums  of 
our  greater  cities,  the  highest  human  type  we  know. 
Nor  is  this  the  least  of  the  reasons  why  the  exceptional 
citizen  of  the  "Black  Belt"  of  the  South  is  so  often 
regarded  as  the  most  adequate  representative  of  our 
gentler  and  nobler  life. 

IV 

But  the  exceptional  man  cannot  be  alone  the  theatre 
or  the  agent  of  our  social  policies.  These  must  include 
the  average  man  as  well.  The  few  may  reign  but  the 
many  are  the  world;  and  it  is  with  the  world  that  we 
must  deal.  The  exceptional  man,  however,  may  give 
us  —  here  as  everywhere  —  the  clue  to  general  policies, 
not  merely  to  their  spirit,  but  to  their  principle.  The 


i64  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

substitution  of  cooperative  for  repressive  methods  will 
slowly  reveal  the  fact  that  the  basis  of  our  ascendancy 
as  well  as  the  basis  of  our  security  is  a  double  basis. 
The  educative  reactions  induced  within  the  stronger 
group  by  the  life  of  the  weaker  are  given  not  merely  a 
higher  principle,  a  new  and  constructive  method,  by 
the  cooperative  instinct,  but  they  are  given  a  new  and 
cumulative  power.  As  men  help  other  men,  as  race 
helps  race,  the  slow  rise  of  the  weaker  touches  the  level 
of  the  stronger  with  an  upward  pressure.  The  weaker 
group  affects  the  stronger  less  and  less  as  the  dragging 
pull  of  an  insensate  or  declining  life,  and  more  and  more 
as  the  impulsion  of  a  slowly  rising  and  increasingly  whole 
some  influence.  The  difference  in  the  quality  of  its 
contact,  between  a  social  group  which  is  organically  alive 
and  organically  growing,  and  a  social  group,  upon  the 
other  hand,  which  is  organically  dying,  cannot  be  meas 
ured  in  the  terms  of  cold  and  literal  value.  The  level 
of  the  latter  may  be  actually  higher  than  that  of  the 
former,  but  the  social  contact  of  the  one  is  disease,  and 
of  the  other  —  however  feeble  —  is  cooperative  power. 
This  cooperation  of  the  weaker  with  the  stronger  is, 
moreover,  largely  independent  of  its  desire  to  help,  and 
may  not  be  necessarily  sympathetic.  Indeed,  if  this 
lower  group  be  really  alive,  if  it  be  really  a  growing  and 
not  a  decadent  social  force,  its  oppositions  will  be,  at 
times,  more  helpful  than  its  assistances.  Its  real  co 
operation  is  not  dependent  on  its  voluntary  choice,  but 
upon  the  sheer  vitality  and  the  subtle  momentum  of  its 
progress.  For  there  is  something  organic  in  the  nature 
of  the  larger  unity  of  society  itself.  As  within  our  physi 
cal  experience,  one  organ  —  however  unimportant- 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  165 

helps  every  other  organ  and  helps  the  body  as  a  whole, 
primarily  by  being  alive  and  by  not  being  dead,  and  then 
helps  still  further  by  the  living  processes  of  its  own 
life,  —  just  by  its  proper  functioning,  —  so  within  the 
general  order  of  society  the  active  and  growing  group  is 
a  contributary  and  cooperative  force.  The  laborer 
who  begins  really  to  think  for  himself  helps  the  em 
ployer  just  in  proportion  to  the  activity  and  soundness 
of  that  thinking.  He  may  not  be  especially  interested 
in  helping  the  employer,  indeed  he  may  chiefly  desire 
to  help  himself,  but  his  essential  helpfulness  —  whether 
the  employer  perceives  it  or  no  —  is  none  the  less 
fundamental.  That  his  thinking  in  one  direction 
makes  his  mind  more  active  in  all  directions,  and 
makes  him  a  more  efficient  laborer,  is  but  the  begin 
ning  of  his  contribution.  His  growing  intelligence  as 
a  laborer  compels  his  employer  to  approach  him  and 
to  deal  with  him,  more  and  more,  through  his  higher 
rather  than  through  his  lower  faculties,  and  by  his  thus 
unconsciously  imposing  upon  his  employer  the  necessity 
for  intelligent  appeals  and  for  an  increasingly  intelligent 
adjustment  of  relations,  his  employer  is  himself  forced 
to  become  more  intelligent,  is  involved  in  the  educational 
process  of  the  workman.  Education  is  thus  both  a 
social  act  and,  automatically,  a  compulsory  movement 
of  society  itself. 

Few  things  in  the  general  growth  of  intelligence 
among  our  negroes  at  the  South  are,  therefore,  of  more 
far-reaching  importance  than  the  upward  pressure  of 
that  intelligence  upon  the  levels  of  the  race  above  them. 
For  the  upward  pressure  of  one  group  upon  another 
group  is  as  obvious  as  the  pressure  from  individual  to 


166  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

individual.  Not  only  does  a  race  which  is  declining  in 
efficiency  have  a  tendency  to  pull  the  stronger  into  the 
descending  processes  of  its  ruin,  but  a  race  which  is 
relatively  lower  has  a  tendency,  if  it  be  growing  in  effi- 
cency,  to  involve  the  stronger  in  the  ascending  processes 
of  its  rise.  As  it  thinks  and  knows,  it  compels  every 
group  which  deals  with  it  to  think  more  and  to  know 
more.  As  it  works  better  and  wastes  less,  it  impels 
each  other  race  which  enters  into  relations  with  it  to 
take  the  better  quality  of  its  work,  and  the  factors  of 
self-control  represented  by  its  economies,  into  its  own 
industrial  or  mercantile  account.  The  laboring  forces 
of  other  groups  must  themselves  labor  better  and  save 
more. 

The  employers  of  an  improving  and  saving  negro 
labor  are  also  helped  by  the  treble  form  of  that  upward 
pressure  which  an  advancing  lower  group  is  uncon 
sciously  but  unceasingly  contributing  to  the  higher. 
First,  there  is  the  direct  contribution  of  an  advancing 
efficiency  not  merely  to  the  details  of  execution  but  to 
the  larger  policy  of  production;  the  employer  may 
employ  fewer  hands,  effect  a  more  compact  organization, 
and,  by  reason  of  the  decreasing  factor  of  waste,  may 
estimate  expenses  and  receipts  with  a  nicety  which  in 
creases  both  the  stability  and  the  profits  of  his  under 
taking.  Secondly,  there  is  also  for  the  employer  that 
indirect  contribution  to  his  capacities  and  his  business 
which  arises  from  his  relations  with  a  more  effective 
labor.  He  may  never  enter  it  in  his  ledger,  but  life  will 
enter  it  in  the  nature  of  the  man.  Though  his  "labor" 
may  be  relatively  much  lower  than  himself,  he  will 
have  to  deal  with  higher  men  in  higher  ways.  Thirdly, 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  167 

he  will  have  to  deal  with  growing  men  in  growing  ways. 
If  they  are  growing,  he  must  not  only  continue  to  be 
relatively  higher,  he  must  not  only  continue  to  be 
found  at  some  old  adopted  level  of  advantage  —  but 
he,  too,  must  grow.  If  a  particular  excellence  of  plan, 
or  method  of  oversight,  or  manner  of  persuasion,  or 
form  of  mutual  commerce  was  adequate  on  yesterday, 
and  they  move  upward  toward  it,  he  must  move  also. 
Their  upward  movement  is  one  of  those  forms  of  social 
reaction  within  the  weaker  race  which,  however  inter 
esting,  is  at  this  moment  not  within  the  scope  of  the 
discussion.  But  as  they  move  up,  as  they  grow,  their 
movement  touches  and  impels  his  own.  He  may  grow 
toward  them  in  his  sympathies,  but  their  comprehension 
within  his  sympathies,  like  their  intellectual  compre 
hension  within  his  policies,  is  in  itself  a  process  by  which 
he  must  transcend  them.  For  they  themselves  —  how 
ever  unconsciously  —  are  ceaselessly  at  work  within 
him,  his  growth  being  a  condition  of  theirs  as  theirs  is 
a  condition  of  his  own:  and  as  they  grow  they  con 
tribute  as  we  have  seen,  (i)  the  direct  efficiency  which 
comes  from  growth ;  (2)  the  indirect  development  of  his 
efficiency  which  comes  from  intelligent  contact  and  more 
effective  oppositions;  (3)  that  momentum  of  their 
movement  which  makes  their  contribution  not  only 
static  but  dynamic  —  that  gift  which  is  no  mere  result 
of  growing,  but  the  growing.  This  is  the  supreme  ser 
vice  to  every  organism,  to  every  faculty  of  every  organ 
ism,  which  comes  from  any  part  or  faculty  —  however 
lowly  or  unhonored  —  that  is  not  dead,  but  living. 


i68  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 


Such,  indeed,  are  in  some  measure  the  processes  of 
that  more  general  social  movement  which  in  its  larger 
aspect  we  call  the  progress  of  humanity.  It  is  made  of 
innumerable  divisions.  It  is  divided  into  classes  and 
subdivided  into  races,  or  divided  into  races  and  sub 
divided  into  classes.  It  is  found  in  families  and  in 
nations.  Its  unity  is  organized  under  governments 
which  deny  it,  and  disorganized  under  revolutions 
which  affirm  it.  But  it  has  survived  the  peril  of  its 
negations  and  the  darker  peril  of  its  affirmations,  just 
as  it  has  survived  and  will  continue  to  survive  the  pass 
ing  expressions  of  party  and  the  indestructible  forms  of 
racial  and  domestic  segregation.  Within  the  final  order 
of  its  life  there  is  no  test  of  survival  or  of  ascendancy 
except  that  condition  of  social  health  which  has  been 
variously  defined,  but  which  I  will  venture  to  term  the 
capacity  for  the  utilization  of  reactions.  It  might  be 
defined  more  simply  as  the  social  capacity  for  self-cor 
rection,  or  as  the  power  of  fundamental  appropria 
tion.  It  is  the  power  to  transmute  every  possession  of 
society  —  every  relevant  aid  and  every  relevant  antag 
onism  —  into  the  coin  of  social  use,  into  larger  and 
freer  forms  of  self-possession.  It  is  more  than  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  it  is  the  power  which  makes  us 
fit.  It  is  more  than  the  power  of  adaptation  to  en 
vironment,  it  must  adapt  and  readapt  environment, 
whether  it  be  economic  or  racial  or  political,  as  the 
social  training-ground  —  the  educative  home  —  of  men. 

It  perceives  the  nature  of  the  reaction  induced  by 
this  or  that  economic  situation.  It  declares  that  if  the 


UNIVERSITY  )] 


OF 
L  I  F 


ix  THE   POWER   OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  169 

reaction  be  evil  the  situation  must  be  changed,  —  that  it 
must  be  changed  not  merely  because  it  is  damaging  busi 
ness,  but  because  it  is  educating  or  miseducating  men. 
It  declares  that  an  economic  force  may  be  made  a  human 
force,  that  it  is  just  as  much  a  human  force  —  if  put 
consciously  to  work  in  relation  to  human  situations  — 
as  the  electricity  which  through  the  telegraph  we  have 
put  into  every  intellectual  or  social  activity  of  experience, 
or  the  ether  which  through  the  skill  of  the  surgeon  we 
have  put  into  therapeutics.  It  would  ask  that  we  so 
utilize  the  social  reactions  of  an  economic  situation,  and 
the  economic  reaction  of  social  forces,  as  not  merely  to 
make  our  education  of  service  in  our  industries,  but  to 
make  the  whole  industrial  organization  of  society  of 
larger  service  to  education.  As  men  are  educated  more 
largely  by  their  occupations  than  by  their  schools,  there 
can  be  no  ultimate  education  of  society  until  the  educa 
tional  significance  of  economic  situations  and  of  eco 
nomic  employments  —  in  their  reactions  upon  individual 
and  social  character  —  are  more  consciously  and  more 
directly  included  within  the  policies  of  the  state. 

Yet  many  a  man  has  the  power  to  utilize  the  reaction 
which  is  induced  in  him  by  a  field  or  an  occupation, 
who  has  not  the  wisdom  or  the  self-control  to  utilize 
the  reaction  induced  in  him  by  another  man.  So  also 
is  it  with  social  groups,  and  so  is  it  with  races.  How 
often  have  men  been  destroyed  by  situations  through 
which  —  with  whatever  adversities  —  they  might  have 
reigned  !  For  the  reaction  induced  in  the  man  by 
his  habitual  contact  with  a  racial  or  social  group  is 
just  as  educative,  to  his  damage  or  his  advancement, 
as  that  from  the  occupation  or  the  field.  Each  is  a 


170  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

factor  in  the  active  or  the  responsive  environment  of  his 
nature.  Each  will  contribute  directly  and  indirectly 
either  to  that  education  which  through  its  narrowing, 
contractive,  descending  forms  will  give  to  his  manhood 
an  ever  hardening  and  coarser  quality,  and  to  his  life 
horizons  shrinking  and  overburdened  ;  or  to  that 
education  which  in  its  expanding  and  emancipative 
forms  may  so  utilize  the  known  reactions  of  his  human 
contact  as  to  turn  adversity  into  power. 

If  he  is  really  strong,  he  will  be  also  wise.  He  will 
make  no  war  upon  the  Universe.  As  he  cooperates 
with  its  forces  it  will  stand  at  his  back.  He  will  know 
that  in  so  far  as  security  and  ascendancy  are  possible  to 
any  racial  group,  their  basis  will  be  found  not  in  his 
preferences,  but  in  Its  realities.  Yet,  believing  in  him 
self,  and  therefore  taking  its  realities  for  his  prefer 
ences,  he  will  create  his  institutions  that  he  may 
share  them,  his  opportunities  that  he  may  divide  them, 
his  integrity  of  race  in  forms  so  true  that  every  race 
will  necessarily  protect  it,  and  his  social  ascendancy 
in  terms  so  efficient  and  so  serviceable  —  through  the 
qualities  of  its  stewardship  —  that  every  group  will 
instinctively  bestow  it.  For  such  an  integrity  of  race 
is  protected  by  every  group  which  through  the  freer 
processes  of  its  self-development  is  led  to  deepen  the 
instinct  of  its  self-protection;  and  such  an  ascendancy 
is  bestowed  by  every  group  which  through  its  free 
dom  to  think  becomes  a  thought-compelling,  rather 
than  a  thought-repressing,  force;  which,  through  its 
sounder  health  and  its  larger  capacities,  contributes 
to  the  higher  group,  however  slowly,  not  merely  the 
upward  pressure  of  its  gains,  and  the  indirect  profit 


ix  THE   POWER    OF   SOCIAL   REACTIONS  171 

of    its  resistances,  but  the  dynamic   impulsion  of    its 
growth. 

Just  as  within  the  related  and  impinging  units  of 
every  series  the  movement  of  the  first  transmits  not 
merely  a  contact  which  assists  and  an  assistance  which 
impels,  but  motion  itself,  from  unit  to  unit  throughout 
the  whole,  so  the  progress  of  our  human  life  within  its 
lowest  levels  must  involve  —  as  each  level  bears  upward 
upon  higher  levels  —  not  merely  a  change  in  the  static 
or  relative  position  of  units  or  classes,  but  the  actuality 
and  quality  of  motion.  It  is  this  which  transmutes 
motion  into  momentum,  and,  in  the  organic  world, 
accretion  into  growth.  This  is  the  gift  of  one  to  all,— 
the  unseen  beneficence  of  every  advancing  level  how 
ever  far  submerged,  of  every  group  or  race  however 
lowly.  To  be  so  advanced  is  to  be  advanced  by  the 
valid  suffrages  of  a  far  age  contemporary  with  our  toil, 
and  of  strange  peoples  now  alive  within  our  history. 
To  profit  by  such  progress  —  if  we  have  so  used  the 
counsel  of  our  affairs  —  is  to  be  advantaged  by  that 
course  of  nature  which  is  the  will  of  Truth,  the  prof 
fered  friendship  of  Reality  ;  and  to  be  so  ascendant 
is  to  serve,  and  to  be  served  by,  the  order  and  momen 
tum  of  the  world. 


THE  NEW   COERCION 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  NEW  COERCION 


BEFORE  leaving  the  subject  of  the  educative  effect 
of  the  reactions  inaugurated  in  one  social  group  by  the 
capacities  and  activities  of  another,  it  would  be  inter 
esting  to  dwell  more  fully  upon  some  of  its  less  obvious 
phases.  Yet  these  for  the  present  must  remain  un 
noted. 

The  consideration  of  the  action  of  group  upon  group 
within  the  South,  must  here  yield  place  to  a  brief  con 
sideration  of  the  effect  upon  the  South  as  a  whole,  of 
the  forces  of  that  greater  world  of  Western  ideas  and 
of  modern  institutions  of  which  it  forms  a  part.  Under 
this  aspect  of  our  subject  the  South  —  and  by  "the 
South"  I  mean  the  dominant  and  representative  ele 
ment  in  its  life  —  is  viewed  as  itself  a  group  placed 
historically  and  socially  within  the  context  of  a  larger 
fellowship. 

Here  again,  however,  the  limitations  of  space  permit 
only  a  passing  reference  to  but  a  few  of  the  more  sig 
nificant  phases  of  our  subject.  Yet  it  is  obvious  that 
many  of  the  issues  of  our  American  history  which  have 
seemed  to  take  their  form  under  the  constraint  of  mili 
tary  or  political  power  have  been  so  adjusted  by  armies 
or  by  parties  chiefly  because  they  were  of  a  piece  with 
the  inevitable  movement  of  society  itself.  Mr.  Lincoln's 
observation  that  the  issue  of  the  Civil  War  would  be 

'75 


176  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

determined  by  "the  preponderance  of  resources"  was 
true,  but  true  only  in  the  sense  that  the  word  "re 
sources"  must  be  given  something  more  than  its  military 
or  its  diplomatic  usage.  The  time  had  in  fact  gone  by 
for  the  creation  of  a  modern  state  involved  in  a  system 
of  slave  labor.  The  conception  was  an  economic  anach 
ronism.  In  its  conflict  with  the  South,  the  "resources" 
of  the  North  were  in  fact  the  armies,  the  wealth,  the 
policies,  the  markets,  the  institutions,  the  literatures  of 
the  world :  for  every  selfish  interest  or  social  aspiration 
of  every  class  in  every  modern  government  was  naturally 
enlisted  upon  the  side  of  an  industrial  system  associated 
with  free  labor,  as  against  an  industrial  system  repre 
senting  a  system  of  slave  labor.  The  temporary  victory 
of  Lee,  even  the  establishment  of  the  Confederate  States, 
could  have  availed  nothing.  The  war,  under  one  form 
or  another,  would  have  had  to  go  on,  —  and  the  victory, 
under  one  form  or  another,  must  have  brought  at  length 
the  same  industrial  transformation.  The  South,  how 
ever  unwittingly,  however  heroically,  had  joined  issue 
with  the  world.  The  world,  thoroughly  committed  to 
a  system  of  free  labor  as  the  industrial  basis  both  of  its 
competitions  and  its  reciprocities,  could  not  pause 
until  the  common  standard  of  its  adjustments  and 
exchanges  was  finally  secure.  This  is  not  to  ignore 
the  sentimental  or  humanitarian  phases  of  the  struggle ; 
it  is  but  to  state  them  in  another  form. 

Emerging  in  defeat  from  the  issue  of  arms,  it  was 
inevitable,  however,  that  the  South  should  have  been 
slow  to  appreciate  both  the  moral  and  the  economic 
significance  of  its  results.  We  do  not  readily  learn  the 
advantages  of  freedom  through  the  processes  of  con- 


x  THE   NEW  COERCION  177 

straint.  We  do  not  at  once  perceive  the  profits  of 
free  labor  through  an  industrial  situation  in  which 
-  however  inevitably  —  freedom  is  largely  extolled 
and  labor  largely  abandoned.  We  entered  but  pain 
fully  into  the  full  philosophy  of  an  enlargement  of 
popular  rights  "guaranteed"  under  forms  which  so 
annulled  the  liberties  of  white  men  that  the  older  deso 
lation,  wrought  by  intelligent  armies,  seemed  prefer 
able  to  the  new  exploitations  wrought  by  the  ignorant 
civil  successors  of  their  authority  and  power.  Yet, 
in  every  deeper  sense,  it  should  have  been  understood 
that  there  could  be  no  ultimate  winning  of  freedom  for 
the  slave  which  did  not  involve  the  winning  of  the  South 
for  freedom.  A  popular  faith  in  liberty  is  insecurely 
founded  in  policies  of  suspicion  and  repression.  It  is 
hard  for  real  men  to  find  their  generosities  through 
their  humiliations.  The  school  of  our  bitterness,  of  our 
scepticism  toward  the  future  of  the  freedmen  and  tow 
ard  the  larger  democracy  of  the  nation,  lay  not  so 
much  in  our  defeat  as  in  the  policies  which  followed 
it.  Yet  this  Northern  movement  of  retaliation  and 
repression,  offending  that  spirit  of  freedom  which  it 
had  originally  invoked,  drew  into  the  cause  of  the 
South  those  deeper  forces  of  moral  cooperation  and  of 
economic  interest  which  slavery  had  estranged. 

If  the  South  had  sinned  against  freedom  in  the  name 
of  property,  the  North  was  now  sinning  against  freedom 
in  the  name  of  government.  That  common  mind  of 
right  feeling,  of  good  sense,  and  of  economic  health 
which  had  been  arrayed  against  the  South  thus  came, 
in  turn,  to  the  South' s  support,  expressed  itself  in  oppo 
sition  to  the  policies  of  Reconstruction,  in  favor  of  a 


178  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

sounder  confidence  in  the  forces  of  local  responsibility, 
and  compelled  that  ultimate  readjustment  of  political 
power  which  placed  the  government  of  each  Southern 
State  within  the  control  of  Southern  men.  Against  the 
program  of  Reconstruction  and  in  rejection  of  the  policy 
of  repression,  the  soul  and  wisdom  of  the  North  at 
length  took  part.  Within  the  very  party  of  Abolition 
the  program  of  coercion  found  its  critics;  for  that 
was  by  no  means  an  isolated  protest  against  the  dis 
abilities  imposed  upon  the  intelligence  of  the  South, 
which  was  voiced  by  the  late  Carl  Schurz  on  January 
30,  1872,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  His  close 
affiliations  with  the  war  party  of  the  North,  his  intense 
sympathy  with  the  program  of  emancipation,  and  his 
peculiar  personal  associations  with  the  development  of 
the  policy  of  Reconstruction  make  his  words  singu 
larly  significant.  In  his  argument l  for  a  policy  of 
"  universal  amnesty,"  Mr.  Schurz  said :  — 

".  .  .  The  end  and  aim  of  our  endeavors  can  be  no 
other  than  to  secure  to  all  the  States  the  blessings  of 
good  and  free  government,  and  the  highest  degree  of 
prosperity  and  well-being  they  can  obtain,  and  to  re 
vive  in  all  citizens  of  this  republic  that  love  for  the 
Union  and  its  institutions,  and  that  inspiring  conscious 
ness  of  a  common  nationality,  which  after  all  must  bind 
all  Americans  together.  .  .  . 

1  See  speech  of  the  Hon.  Carl  Schurz,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  January  30,  1872,  in  favor  of  a  bill  removing  the  political 
disabilities  imposed  by  the  third  section  of  the  "Fourteenth  Amend 
ment  to  the  Constitution";  reprinted  from  the  Congressional  Globe 
with  the  permission  of  Mr.  Schurz,  in  Ringwalt's  "Modern  American 
Oratory,"  p.  93,  and  in  Baker's  "Forms  of  Public  Address,"  p.  353; 
Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  New  York,  1904. 


X  THE  NEW  COERCION  179 

4 'Look  at  the  Southern  States  as  they  stand  before 
us  to-day  [1872].  Some  are  in  a  condition  bordering 
upon  anarchy,  not  only  on  account  of  the  social  dis 
orders  which  are  occurring  there,  or  the  inefficiency 
of  their  local  governments  in  securing  the  enforce 
ment  of  the  laws;  but  you  will  find  in  many  of  them 
fearful  corruption  pervading  the  whole  political  or 
ganization;  a  combination  of  rascality  and  ignorance 
wielding  official  power;  their  finances  deranged  by 
profligate  practices;  their  credit  ruined;  bankruptcy 
staring  them  in  the  face;  their  industries  staggering 
under  a  fearful  load  of  taxation;  their  property  holders 
and  capitalists  paralyzed  by  a  feeling  of  insecurity  and 
distrust  almost  amounting  to  despair.  Sir,  let  us  not 
try  to  disguise  these  facts,  for  the  world  knows  them  to 
be  so,  and  knows  it  but  too  well.  .  .  . 

"Just  at  that  period  when  they  lay  prostrated  and 
exhausted  at  our  feet,  when  the  destructive  besom  of 
war  had  swept  over  them  and  left  nothing  but  desolation 
and  ruin  in  its  track,  when  their  material  interests 
were  to  be  built  up  again  with  care  and  foresight,  - 
just  then  the  public  business  demanded,  more  than 
ordinarily,  the  cooperation  of  all  the  intelligence  and 
all  the  political  experience  that  could  be  mustered  in 
the  Southern  States.  .  .  .  When  universal  suffrage 
was  granted  to  secure  the  equal  rights  of  all,  universal 
amnesty  ought  to  have  been  granted  to  make  all  the 
resources  of  political  intelligence  and  experience 
available  for  the  promotion  of  the  welfare  of  all. 

"But  what  did  we  do?  To  the  uneducated  and 
inexperienced  classes  —  uneducated  and  inexperi 
enced,  I  repeat,  entirely  without  their  fault  —  we 


i8o  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

opened  the  road  to  power;  and  at  the  same  time  we 
condemned  a  large  proportion  of  the  intelligence  of 
those  States,  of  the  property-holding,  the  industrial, 
the  professional,  the  tax-paying  interest  to  a  worse 
than  passive  attitude.  We  made  it,  as  it  were,  easy 
for  rascals  who  had  gone  South  in  quest  of  profitable 
adventure  to  gain  the  control  of  the  masses  so  easily 
misled,  by  permitting  them  to  appear  as  the  exponents 
and  representatives  of  the  national  power  and  of  our 
policy;  and  at  the  same  time  we  branded  a  large  num 
ber  of  men  of  intelligence,  and  many  of  them  of  per 
sonal  integrity,  whose  material  interests  were  so  largely 
involved  in  honest  government,  and  many  of  whom 
would  have  cooperated  in  managing  the  public  busi 
ness  with  care  and  foresight, — we  branded  them,  I  say, 
as  outcasts.  .  .  . 

"When  the  Rebellion  stood  in  arms  against  us,  we 
fought  and  overcame  force  by  force.  That  was 
right.  ...  But  when  the  problem  presented  itself  of  se 
curing  the  permanency,  the  peaceable  development  and 
the  successful  working  of  the  new  institutions  we  had 
introduced  into  our  political  organism,  we  had  as  wise 
men  to  take  into  careful  calculation  the  moral  forces  we 
had  to  deal  with ;  for  let  us  not  indulge  in  any  delusion 
about  this :  what  is  to  be  permanent  in  a  Republic  like 
this  must  be  supported  by  public  opinion;  it  must  rest 
at  least  upon  the  willing  acquiescence  of  a  large  and  firm 
majority  of  the  people.  .  .  .  We  desired  the  Southern 
whites  to  accept  in  good  faith  universal  suffrage,  to 
recognize  the  political  rights  of  the  colored  man  and  to 
protect  him  in  their  exercise.  .  .  .  But  what  did  we 
do?  . 


x  THE   NEW   COERCION  181 

".  .  .  If  you  desired  the  white  man  to  accept  and 
recognize  the  political  equality  of  the  black,  was  it 
wise  to  embitter  and  exasperate  his  spirit  with  the 
stinging  stigma  of  his  own  inferiority?  Was  it  wise 
to  withhold  from  him  privileges  in  the  enjoyment  of 
which  he  was  to  protect  the  late  slave?  .  .  .  To  their 
honor  be  it  said  that  the  colored  people,  following  a 
just  instinct,  were  among  the  first  —  not  only  in  the 
South  but  all  over  the  country  —  in  entreating  Con 
gress  to  remove  those  odious  discriminations  [against 
white  men]  which  put  in  jeopardy  their  own  rights 
by  making  them  greater  than  those  of  others.  From 
the  colored  people  themselves,  it  seems,  we  have  in  this 
respect  received  a  lesson  in  statesmanship.  .  .  . 

"We  are  asked,  shall  the  Rebellion  go  entirely  un 
punished  ?  No,  sir ;  it  shall  not.  Neither  do  I  think 
that  the  Rebellion  has  gone  entirely  unpunished.  .  .  . 
There  was  a  proud  and  arrogant  aristocracy.  .  .  . 
They  looked  down  not  only  upon  their  slaves,  but  also 
upon  the  people  of  the  North,  with  the  haughty  con 
tempt  of  self -asserting  superiority.  When  their  pre 
tensions  to  rule  us  all  were  first  successfully  disputed, 
they  resolved  to  destroy  this  Republic  and  to  build  up 
on  the  corner-stone  of  slavery  an  empire  of  their  own 
in  which  they  could  hold  absolute  sway.  They  made 
the  attempt  with  the  most  overweeningly  confident  ex 
pectation  of  certain  victory.  Then  came  the  Civil 
War,  and  after  four  years  of  struggle  their  whole  power 
and  pride  lay  shivered  to  atoms  at  our  feet,  their  sons 
dead  by  tens  of  thousands  on  the  battlefields  of  this 
country,  their  fields  and  their  homes  devastated;  their 
fortunes  destroyed;  and  more  than  that,  the  whole 


1 82  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

social  system  in  which  they  had  their  being,  with  all 
their  hopes  and  pride,  utterly  wiped  out ;  slavery  forever 
abolished,  and  the  slaves  themselves  created  a  political 
power  before  which  they  had  to  bow  their  heads ;  and 
they  themselves  —  broken,  helpless  and  hopeless,  in  the 
dust  before  those  upon  whom  they  had  so  haughtily 
looked  down  as  their  vassals  and  inferiors.  Sir,  can 
it  be  said  that  the  Rebellion  has  gone  entirely  un 
punished?  .  .  . 

"Believe  me,  Senators,  the  statesmanship  which 
this  period  of  our  history  demands  is  not  exhausted  by 
high-sounding  declamation  about  the  greatness  of  the 
crime  of  rebellion,  and  fearful  predictions  as  to  what  is 
going  to  happen  unless  the  rebels  are  punished  with 
sufficient  severity.  We  have  heard  so  much  of  this 
from  some  gentlemen,  and  so  little  else,  that  the  inquiry 
naturally  suggests  itself  whether  this  is  the  whole  com 
pass,  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  their  political  wisdom 
and  their  political  virtue;  whether  it  is  really  their 
opinion  that  the  South  may  be  plundered  with  im 
punity  by  rascals  in  power,  that  the  substance  of  those 
States  may  be  wasted,  that  their  credit  may  be  ruined, 
that  their  prosperity  may  be  blighted,  that  their  future 
may  be  blasted,  that  the  poison  of  bad  feeling  may 
still  be  kept  working  where  we  might  do  something  to 
assuage  its  effects;  that  the  people  may  lose  more  and 
more  their  faith  in  the  efficiency  of  self-government  and 
of  republican  institutions;  —  that  all  this  may  happen, 
and  we  look  on  complacently,  if  we  can  only  continue  to 
keep  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  our  late  enemies,  and  to  de 
monstrate  again  and  again,  as  the  Senator  from  Indiana 
has  it,  our  disapprobation  of  the  crime  of  rebellion? 


x  THE  NEW   COERCION  183 

"Sir,  such  appeals  as  these  which  we  have  heard 
so  frequently  may  well  be  apt  to  tickle  the  ear  of  an 
unthinking  multitude.  But  unless  I  am  grievously  in 
error,  the  people  of  the  United  States  are  a  multitude 
not  unthinking.  The  American  people  are  fast  be 
coming  aware  that,  great  as  the  crime  of  rebellion  is, 
there  are  other  villainies  beside  it;  that  much  as  it  may 
deserve  punishment  there  are  other  evils  flagrant 
enough  to  demand  energetic  correction;  that  the 
remedy  for  such  evils  does,  after  all,  not  consist  in  the 
maintenance  of  political  disabilities;  and  that  it  would 
be  well  to  look  behind  those  vociferous  demonstra 
tions  of  exclusive  and  austere  patriotism  to  see  what 
abuses  and  faults  of  policy  they  are  [possibly  intended] 
to  cover,  and  what  rotten  sores  they  are  [meant]  to 
disguise.  The  American  people  are  fast  beginning 
to  perceive  that  good  and  honest  government  in  the 
South,  as  well  as  throughout  the  whole  country,  restor 
ing  a  measurable  degree  of  confidence  and  contentment, 
will  do  infinitely  more  to  revive  true  loyalty  and  a 
healthy  national  spirit,  than  keeping  alive  the  resent 
ments  of  the  past  by  a  useless  degradation  of  certain 
classes  of  persons;  and  that  we  shall  fail  to  do  our 
duty  unless  we  use  every  means  to  contribute  our  share 
to  that  end.  .  .  . 

"No,  Sir,  I  would  not  have  the  past  forgotten,  but 
I  would  have  its  history  completed  and  crowned  by 
an  act  most  worthy  of  a  great,  noble,  and  wise  people. 
By  all  the  means  which  we  have  in  our  hands,  I  would 
make  even  those  who  have  sinned  against  this  Republic 
see  in  its  flag  not  the  symbol  of  their  lasting  degradation, 
but  of  rights  equal  to  all;  I  would  make  them  feel  in 


i*4  THK   HAS  IS   OF   ASCKNDANCY  CHAP. 

their  hearts  that  in  its  good  and  evil  fortunes  their 
rights  and  interests  are  bound  up  just  as  ours  are,  and 
that  therefore  its  peace,  its  welfare,  its  honor,  and  its 
greatness  may  and  ought  to  be  as  dear  to  them  as  they 
are  to  us." 

That  such  an  appeal  from  such  a  man  should  have 
failed  of  its  immediate  purpose  is  but  an  added  illus 
tration  of  the  power  and  persistence  of  those  coercive 
forces  within  which  the  life  of  the  South  had  been 
involved.  Only  "by  little  and  little"  were  these 
disabilities  swept  away.1  Not  until  1877  were  the 
military  forces  of  the  North  wholly  withdrawn  from 
the  Southern  States,  —  and  they  were  then  withdrawn, 
as  we  now  know,  not  in  obedience  to  those  impulses 
of  an  uncalculating  generosity  for  which  Mr.  Schur/, 
had  pleaded,2  but  in  conformity  with  a  compact  in  which 

1  While  the  amnesty  bill  of  1872  removed  the  disabilities  from  all 
but  about  750  individuals  (according  to  Mr.  Hlaine)  these  were  largely 
those  whose  personalities  were  of  special  significance  to  the  South  and 
whose  cooperation  was  peculiarly  indispensable  to  the  nation;  among 
them  were  such  natural  leaders  as  Z.  H.  Vance  of  North  Carolina, 
L.  Q.  C.  Lamar  of  Mississippi,  J.  L.  M.  Curry  of  Alabama,  Judge 
I  II.  Reagan  of  Texas,  John  A.  Campbell,  Joseph  K.  Johnston, 
G.  T.  Beaureganl,  W.  J.  Harden,  and  William  A.  (Iraham.  A 
number  of  these  were  soon  relieved  of  their  disabilities  upon  their 
personal  petition,  but  many  regarded  the  conditions  as  unnecessarily 
humiliating.  The  last  personal  act  relieving  disability  was  signed 
February  24,  1897.  Full  amnesty  was  not  granted  till  the  passage  of 
the  general  act  of  June  6,  1898.  (See  James  Ford  Rhodes,  "History 
of  the  United  States,"  Vol.  VI,  pp.  329,  330;  New  York,  1906:  also, 
"Reconstruction,  Political  and  Economic,"  by  W.  A.  Dunning, 
Lieber  Professor  of  History  and  Political  Philosophy,  Columbia 
University,  pp.  203,  204;  Harper  and  Brothers,  New  York,  1907.) 

'"We  mixed  our  generosity  with  just  enough  of  bitterness  to  prevent 
it  from  bearing  its  full  fruit.  I  repeat,  we  can  make  the  policy  of 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  185 

a  Democratic  House  ultimately  delivered  the  presi 
dency  to  the  North  in  return  for  liberty  to  the  South.1 
And  yet  it  is  obvious  that  the  possibility  of  such  a 
compact  —  the  popular  vote  for  Mr.  Tilden  which  so 
directly  challenged  the  supremacy  of  the  Republican 
party  —  was  an  evidence  of  the  truth  that  Mr.  Schurz, 
despite  his  immediate  defeat,  was  but  interpreting  the 
ultimate  verdict  of  the  country  and  of  the  world.  The 
long  delay  made  more  difficult  the  South's  apprehension 
of  the  significance  of  her  industrial  transformation, 
darkened  her  appreciation  of  the  better  possibilities 
of  the  negro,  limited  her  knowledge  of  the  broader 
impulses  of  the  North,  chilled  and  shrivelled  upon 
every  hand  that  sense  of  fraternity  which  is  one  of 
the  profounder  springs  of  civic  rejuvenation,  —  and 
yet  this  delay  need  not  obscure  for  us  the  fact  that  the 
power  which  spoke  through  Mr.  Schurz  was  the  resist 
less  force  of  that  universal  reason,  that  common  and 
self-executing  energy  of  justice,  which  was  now  fighting 
for  the  enfranchisement  of  the  South  precisely  as  it  had 
fought  for  the  emancipation  of  the  slave.  Such  forms 

generosity  most  fruitful  only  by  making  it  most  complete.  .  .  .  You 
must  not  do  things  by  halves  if  you  want  whole  results.  You  must 
not  expose  yourself  to  the  suspicion  of  a  narrow-minded  desire  to 
pinch  off  your  gift  wherever  there  is  a  chance  for  it,  as  if  you  were 
afraid  you  could  by  any  possibility  give  too  much,  when  giving  more 
would  benefit  the  country  more,  and  when  giving  less  would  detract 
from  the  beneficent  effect  of  that  which  you  do  give."  See  Baker's 
"  Forms  of  Public  Address,"  p.  376;  already  quoted  on  p.  178  of  this 
volume. 

1  The  suggestion  that  there  was  an  actual  "bargain"  has  been 
questioned,  but  Professor  Dunning's  statement  seems  fully  to  justify 
the  wording  of  the  text.  See  pp.  338,  339,  341,  of  "Reconstruction, 
Political  and  Economic,"  by  W.  A.  Dunning,  already  quoted. 


i86  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  despotism  as  Reconstruction  had  attempted,  such 
abuses  and  exploitations,  were  against  the  common  peace 
and  the  general  stability.  They  possessed  no  inward 
coherence.  They  were  based  upon  no  foundations  of 
need.  They  were  involved,  externally  and  politically,  in 
no  enduring  or  tolerable  social  situation  to  which  they 
were  really  contributary  or  by  which  they  could  be 
permanently  sustained.  They  were  without  an  actual 
being  or  potency,  for  they  lacked  the  securities  of  order : 
labor  despised  them  because  they  promised  everything, 
and  capital  forsook  them  because  they  could  really 
promise  nothing.  That  they  had  a  name  and  a  place 
upon  the  earth  was  solely  due  to  the  external  support 
of  a  public  state  of  mind,  —  a  state  of  mind  which  the 
instinct  for  liberty  had  created  and  which  the  same 
instinct  for  liberty  would  now  as  ruthlessly  destroy. 

II 

The  deliverance  of  the  South  from  the  disabilities 
which  had  been  imposed  upon  her,  the  restoration  of 
our  local  governments  into  the  keeping  of  the  local 
conscience,  was  thus  no  mere  achievement  of  an  arti 
ficial  transaction  between  parties  or  sections:  it  was 
an  achievement  of  profounder  forces.  Such  forces 
may  indeed  have  gained  expression  through  the  inci 
dents  of  a  local  struggle  or  in  the  terms  of  a  political 
"adjustment";  yet  these  were  at  last  but  outward  and 
subordinate  phases  of  one  of  the  most  characteristic 
movements  of  the  modern  world,  —  a  movement 
which,  in  conformity  with  the  spirit  of  science  and 
in  response  to  the  spirit  of  democracy,  is  slowly  sub- 


x  THE  NEW   COERCION  187 

jecting  every  policy  of  arbitrary  repression  or  of 
artificial  constraint  to  the  double  test  of  reality  upon 
the  one  hand,  and  of  freedom  upon  the  other.  Our 
disabilities  —  the  older  forms  of  our  coercion  —  were 
overthrown  by  the  very  force  and  genius  of  our  age. 

Out  of  the  conditions  of  that  coercion  the  South 
emerged  with  her  right  to  re-create  her  fortunes  univer 
sally  conceded.  Her  bonds  were  broken.  Emancipation 
was  to  be  given  its  broader  meaning.  There  might 
be  threats  of  "force  bills,"  there  might  be  incidental 
political  aggravations.  Yet  no  one  has  since  dreamed 
that  there  could  be  again  attempted  the  destruction 
of  the  local  basis  of  our  local  administrations.  As  the 
South  took  up  the  task  of  rehabilitation,  she  began  her 
work  in  the  light  of  the  approving  and  rejoicing  interest 
of  the  well-meaning,  the  right-minded,  of  every  latitude. 
She  issued  from  her  period  of  humiliations  bearing 
in  her  hands  —  as  "a  charter  of  consent"  —the  to 
kens  of  sympathetic  and  approving  expectation  from 
those  at  home  and  abroad,  from  old  enemies  and  older 
friends.  At  the  North  there  was  still  some  suspicion, 
and  still  a  little  hate,  but  these  were  the  passions  of 
the  few.  The  stronger  forces  —  both  numerically 
and  intellectually  —  were  glad  that  our  State  govern 
ments  had  been  restored  to  the  governed,  and  that 
democratic  institutions  were  to  be  put  upon  a  demo 
cratic  basis.  They  were  not  oblivious  of  the  evils 
which  still  existed,  many  —  as  in  the  case  of  Mr. 
Schurz  himself  —  sometimes  used  language  about  the 
South  which  contributed  to  give  to  generous  policies 
an  ungenerous  significance;  and  yet  they  clearly  saw 
that  not  until  local  control  should  be  given  its  freer  play 


1 88  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

could  there  come  about  that  local  correction  of  local 
evils  which  is  the  only  ultimate  basis  of  social  health. 
Their  exasperations  were  but  the  residual  flash  of  old 
and  dying  animosities.  The  new  heart  in  them  was 
the  heart  of  hope  for  the  South  and  of  confidence  in 
Southern  men.  Viewed  thus  in  that  larger  and  more 
comprehensive  sense  in  which  any  social  attitude  must 
be  interpreted,  it  is  not  inaccurate  to  declare  that  the 
North,  in  abandoning  the  policies  of  Reconstruction, 
abandoned  them  with  an  honest  loathing  for  their 
abuses  and  with  an  honest  impulse  to  advance  the 
fuller  autonomy  of  the  Southern  States. 

The  response  of  the  South  has  been  more  spontaneous 
and  more  general  than  the  most  sanguine  could  have 
predicted.  The  personal  and  social  fusion  of  the 
forces  of  one  section  with  the  forces  of  the  other,  the 
merging  of  their  industrial  fortunes,  the  tendency  of 
Southern  manufacturing  interests  to  find  a  common 
ground  with  the  dominant  political  party  of  the  North,  and 
the  tendency  of  Northern  municipalities  to  find  common 
ground  with  the  dominant  political  party  of  the  South, 
the  settling  of  the  West  by  the  representatives  of  both, 
the  proving  —  through  the  Spanish  war  —  of  a  com 
mon  loyalty,  the  recognition  —  upon  the  assassina 
tions  of  Garfield  and  McKinley  —  of  a  common  sorrow, 
and  the  sharing  through  men  like  Waring  and  Gorgas, 
and  St.  Gaudens  and  Lanier,  of  a  common  science 
and  a  common  art,  have  built  up  a  nationality  of  spirit 
which  in  its  unity  and  efficiency  is  even  stronger  than 
the  old.  The  South  is  "at  home"  within  the  land. 
The  fact  is  so  obvious  that  its  very  assertion  carries 
almost  the  note  of  affectation.  It  is  true  not  merely 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  189 

because  of  the  reality  of  our  kinship  with  the  older 
past  —  the  past  in  which  our  forefathers  created  the 
unity  our  fathers  could  not  destroy  —  but  because  the 
South  is  at  home  within  the  future,  within  the  region 
of  our  destiny  and  in  the  waiting  province  of  the  high 
est  things  which  this  nation  can  conceive  of  personal 
and  social  freedom.  There  too  she  dwells;  she,  in  her 
soul,  has  no  dream  nor  notion  nor  imagination  except 
of  a  democratic  state.  Of  all  the  sections  of  this 
country  the  serious,  responsible  South  is  the  least 
likely,  in  the  projection  of  its  institutional  future,  to 
plan  a  place  for  a  slave ;  for  this  is  the  only  section  which 
has  really  tried  both  philosophies  of  labor.  There  are 
some  mistakes  which  peoples  do  not  repeat.  The 
societies  which  are  most  securely  free  are  those  which 
have  found  that  a  security  attained  through  freedom 
—  and  therefore  a  security  which  every  man  is  inter 
ested  to  protect  —  is  not  merely  the  better  way  but  the 
only  way. 

And  yet  freedom  has  its  inconveniences.  It  has  — 
especially  as  a  social  condition  —  its  testing  points,  its 
anti-climaxes,  its  weird  confusions,  its  strange  self- 
stultifications.  You  feel  them  in  New  York  City  when 
the  vote  of  an  Assembly- District  of  educated  men, 
with  large  property-holdings,  of  long  residence  and 
tried  experience,  is  offset  by  the  vote  of  another  in 
which  the  interests  of  the  state  are  represented  by 
an  extemporized  constituency  of  twenty  languages, 
little  property,  and  less  intelligence.  Yet  the  North's 
increasing  consciousness  of  the  ignorant  in  its  own 
electorate  has  but  added  to  the  general  appreciation 
of  our  Southern  difficulties,  and  has  to  that  extent 


igo  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

contributed  to  the  unification  of  the  national  temper. 
While  the  presence  at  the  South  of  a  disproportion 
ate  fraction  of  weakness  and  ignorance  in  our  body 
social  has  had  a  tendency  to  contribute  to  our  iso 
lation,  the  very  problem  of  its  mass  —  the  sheer 
weight  of  the  social  burden  —  has  deepened  and 
broadened  the  interest  and  comprehension  of  the 
country  as  a  whole,  and  has  involved  a  franker  and 
freer  acceptance  of  our  initiative.  Despite  the  mut- 
terings  and  threatenings  of  the  few,  despite  a  few  cap 
tious  but  really  unimportant  intrusions  of  the  federal 
authority,  the  South  since  1876  has  been  given  a  "free 
hand." 

Ill 

Yet  not  for  an  hour  has  the  South  been  conscious  of 
peace.  The  sense  of  uneasiness  has  been  perennial. 
We  know  that  the  old  coercion  is  ended;  yet  the  con 
sciousness  of  pressure  is  almost  all-pervasive.  There 
is  a  mind  of  uneasiness  within  our  general  life.  The 
scent  for  aggression  is  acute,  and  the  defensive  habit 
is  persistent. 

Such  a  feeling  of  social  strain  is  due  partly  to  the 
vivid  memory  of  old  abuses,  partly  to  the  skill  with 
which  these  abuses  have  been  recalled,  for  partisan  pur 
poses,  by  the  cheap  threatenings  of  an  occasional 
spokesman  of  the  North  and  by  the  answering  tumult 
of  some  protagonist  of  the  South.  Our  uneasiness  is 
also  the  result  of  a  sense  of  social  responsibility  wrought 
upon  by  the  presence  of  abnormal  difficulties  at  home, 
and  by  the  occasional  sting  of  sincere  but  undiscriminat- 
ing  censure  from  without.  Nor  is  this  all.  It  is  the 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  igt 

result  of  other  and  less  conspicuous  aspects  of  our  fate 
as  "a  section"  and  as  a  people.  Yet  the  deeper 
source  of  our  disquietude  lies,  I  think,  in  none  of  these. 
They  are  not  —  as  disturbing  influences  —  sufficiently 
general  or  sufficiently  powerful  to  explain  a  social  state 
of  mind  so  inclusive  and  so  persistent.  The  absence  of 
any  general  public  interest  at  the  North  in  the  moral 
petulance  with  which  its  narrower  journalism  has 
sometimes  assailed  the  South,  has  long  been  evident. 
The  political  attacks  of  partisanship  at  the  North  and  the 
recurrent  "defences"  of  partisanship  at  the  South  have 
had  little  direct  significance.  While  indirectly  their 
effect  has  been  serious  as  an  irritant,  providing  a  re 
peated  "suggestion"  for  the  states  of  social  self- hypnosis 
in  which  at  times  our  population  has  become  involved, 
yet  —  unrelated  to  other  forces  —  their  continued 
influence  would  have  been  impossible.  Their  sources 
of  power  lie,  as  we  shall  see,  rather  in  the  moral  psy 
chology  of  our  situation  than  in  any  serious  fear  of  one 
political  party  or  in  any  serious  delusions  as  to  the 
other.  Nor  does  the  source  of  our  sense  of  disturbance 
lie  in  the  mere  magnitude  of  our  task.  In  one  sense, 
its  quantitative  proportions,  the  very  weight  and  nature 
of  its  burden,  have  really  proven  —  as  we  have  already 
noted  —  one  of  the  strongest  factors  of  our  security ; 
they  have  drawn  into  the  enlarging  autonomy  of  the 
South  the  sympathetic  cooperation  and  the  broader 
self-interest  both  of  the  North  and  of  the  world. 

What,  then,  is  the  force  of  our  disquietude  ?  For  the 
instinct  of  uneasiness  has  its  basis.  The  popular  con 
sciousness  of  pressure  from  without,  the  sense  of  a 


192  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

new  coercion,  is  not  unfounded.  Our  popular  leaders 
are  prone  to  find  it  in  some  external  enactment  like  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitution,  or  in  some 
Northern  expression  of  feverish  solicitude  for  the  in 
tegrity  of  the  Eighth  Commandment,  or  in  some  poig 
nant  outcry  or  sickening  crime  of  the  weaker  race: 
and  these  leaders  strike  back;  we  are  all  tempted  to 
strike  back.  And  yet,  whether  or  not  we  do  so,  the 
old  disquietude  returns;  the  old  sense  of  pressure, 
the  grip  and  force  of  the  new  coercion,  close  us  in; 
and  we  remain  apart,  apart  from  the  comparative  as 
surance,  the  common  peace  of  our  national  household. 
We  know  it.  Despite  the  emancipating  approval  of 
the  world,  ours  is  still  a  heritage  of  constraint ;  —  and 
we  are  not  untroubled  or  unmoved. 

Yet  is  not  this  very  community  of  freedom  into  which 
the  world  invites  us  the  source  of  our  new  coercion? 
Is  not  its  hospitality  —  the  intimate  and  universal 
invitation  of  its  ideals,  its  democratic  tendencies,  its 
industrial  and  political  assumptions  —  the  real  chal 
lenge  to  every  provincial  aspect  of  our  development? 

The  external  conditions  of  that  development  have 
been  unusual.  No  population  of  a  modern  state  could 
well  have  been  involved  in  processes  of  adjustment  and 
of  readjustment  more  directly  calculated  to  detach 
them  from  the  general  movement  of  democracy.  In 
volved  in  an  economic  situation  which  naturally 
brought  their  social  temper  as  well  as  their  intellectual 
activity  to  the  defence  of  slavery,  forced  to  abandon 
the  institution  not  by  processes  of  persuasion  but  by 
a  physical  constraint  which  found  its  natural  reaction 
in  sympathetic  interpretations  of  the  departing  order, 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  193 

surrounded  by  emancipated  multitudes  whose  weak 
nesses  obscured  the  benefits  of  freedom,  and  over 
whelmed  by  victors  whose  exploitations  obscured  the 
motives  of  emancipation,  the  people  of  the  South  have 
been  permitted  no  untrammelled  course  into  the  prov 
inces  of  democratic  feeling.  In  the  very  presence  of 
the  undeveloped  masses  of  another  race  —  so  different 
in  type  and  circumstance  —  we  have  had  at  each 
moment  of  our  social  development  and  at  each  point 
in  our  institutional  history  a  powerful  challenge  to 
every  democratic  instinct,  and  an  insidious  invitation 
to  modify  through  artificial  provisions  that  com 
mon  democratic  basis  to  which  the  North  itself  is  by 
no  means  perfectly  adjusted.  Thus  in  her  forces  of 
population  as  well  as  in  the  influences  of  her  history, 
the  South  finds  herself  confronted  by  formidable, 
I  had  almost  said  irreducible,  factors  of  social  differ 
entiation.  The  things  that  make  a  people  "different" 
abound  within  her.  Her  whole  environment  is,  in  a 
sense,  a  school  of  eccentricity,  of  detachment,  of  isola 
tion. 

The  contact  and  challenge  of  our  modern  age  to 
a  society  involved  in  such  conditions  will  set  up  within 
its  dominant  population  two  distinct  sets  or  tendencies 
of  reaction.  It  is  inevitable  that  one  of  these  reactions 
should  be  resistive.  A  challenge  from  without  will 
be  answered  by  a  responsive  challenge  from  within. 
Opposition  will  develop  opposition  —  the  return  and 
recoil  of  our  life  upon  itself.  It  will  be  general  and 
instinctive.  The  forces  of  rejection,  of  antagonism, 
of  passionate  segregation,  will  possess  a  profound  and 
general  power.  An  acute  and  exaggerated  conscious- 


i94  THE  BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

ness  of  section  and  of  race  will  be  inevitable.  Instead 
of  passing  away  with  the  increasing  sweep  of  the 
challenge  from  without,  it  will  become  the  more  intense. 
Its  standpoint  will  be  popular,  will  appeal  therefore 
to  the  self-interest  of  a  local  political  leadership,  which, 
in  turn,  will  commend  its  necessity,  exalt  its  dignity, 
and  attempt  its  institutional  expression. 

IV 

Responding  to  these  impulses  of  popular  reaction, 
each  merely  sectional  agency  —  in  our  politics,  our  jour 
nalism,  or  our  education  —  becomes,  in  turn,  such  an 
energy  of  reenforcement  to  all  the  processes  thus  inaugu 
rated  that  the  force  of  detachment  would  become  su 
preme  but  for  the  corrective  power  of  another  tendency. 
The  force  of  attachment  and  inclusion  is  also  operative. 
It  may  not  always  lie  upon  the  surface.  Those  who 
at  the  shore-line  watch  the  drive  and  direction  of  an 
ocean's  storm  may  forget  (to  use  a  familiar  illustration) 
that  there  are  deeper,  stronger  powers  than  wind  and 
wave;  that  beneath  the  tumult  and  fury  of  the  storm 
the  pull  of  the  tide,  unnoted  but  resistless,  is  moving 
the  vaster  volume  of  the  sea.  Within  the  South  the 
force  and  sweep  of  our  turmoil  are  realities;  no  wise 
observer  will  jauntily  predict  their  termination  or  build 
upon  the  assumption  of  their  inconsequence.  But 
deep  as  the  force  of  gravity  and  resistless  as  the  equi 
librium  of  our  stellar  magnitudes,  the  responsive  reac 
tion  of  our  nationality,  the  moral  and  economic  forces 
of  association  and  fraternity,  are  drawing  the  South 
into  the  context  and  community  of  the  world. 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  195 

Just  because  this  movement  which  enfolds  us  is  free, 
is  itself  a  horizon  rather  than  a  dynamic,  its  cogency  is 
the  more  pervasive  and  irresistible.  It  is  not  a  propa 
ganda,  but  an  invitation :  it  is  an  opportunity ;  a  vast 
and  befriending  hospitality.  Many  forces  will  react 
against  it,  but  the  deeper  forces  will  react  toward  it. 
For  the  very  reason  that  it  offers  no  acute  aggressions, 
the  sway  of  its  attraction  is  supreme.  Because  this  new 
coercion  does  not  —  in  the  usual  sense  —  coerce,  its 
power  is  the  more  persistent,  and  the  ultimate  and 
liberal  scope  of  its  persuasion  is  the  more  decisive.  It 
is  not  a  mere  abstraction;  it  descends  not  to  one 
particular  but  to  all.  It  touches  not  only  every  isolated 
locality,  but  every  temper  of  isolation  with  an  im 
palpable  but  dissolving  power;  for  this  movement  of 
unification  and  inclusion,  this  force  of  national  incor 
poration  —  drawing  into  itself  the  detached  interests 
and  the  self-separating  provinces  of  our  American 
life  —  is  in  fact  the  real  education  borne  upon  every 
page  of  every  newspaper,  the  final  influence  of  every 
schoolhouse,  the  gain  acquired  in  every  transaction 
of  our  broadening  commerce,  the  ultimate  harvest  of 
every  farmer  who  sows  for  a  national  market  and  of 
every  laborer  matched  and  disciplined  in  the  school 
of  an  international  competition.  We  live,  moreover, 
by  the  exchanges  of  thought  as  well  as  by  the  ex 
changes  of  trade.  To  stand  outside  the  world  is  in 
tolerable  and  impossible.  Yet  to  be  admitted  is  to 
admit;  for  the  commerce  of  ideas,  of  intellectual  and 
social  influence,  is  impossible  through  erected  barriers 
and  unopening  doors. 

Our  new  coercion  is  indeed  but  the  myriad  force  of 


196  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

every  agency  and  instrument  of  our  modern  world, 
a  world  everywhere  drawing  peoples  from  their  de 
tachment,  races  from  their  isolation,  governments 
from  their  provincialism,  societies  from  peculiar  tra 
ditions  and  estranging  faiths.  We  may  draw  about 
ourselves  the  tense  protections  of  our  "peculiarity,"  the 
boundaries  of  our  intellectual  or  political  segregation. 
In  so  far  as  that  which  we  would  preserve  is  the  subtle 
quality  of  our  individuality  of  spirit,  the  movement 
which  enfolds  us  will  give  it  depth,  richness,  poise. 
But  in  so  far  as  we  attempt  to  seek  the  basis  of  our 
detachment  within  the  institutions,  the  laws,  the  litera 
ture  which  must  always  form  the  common  terms  of  our 
relationship  with  other  sections  and  peoples  (through 
which  they  must  deal  with  us  and  through  which  we 
must  deal  with  them),  the  deeper  movement  of  our 
own  genius  will  correct  us,  and  will  become  —  in  re 
sponse  to  the  expectation  of  the  world  —  a  movement 
of  catholicity  and  accord.  For  the  agencies  of  its  ex 
pectation,  as  the  world  draws  us  within  itself,  —  the 
instruments  of  its  appeal,  —  lie  not  in  particulars  alone, 
but  in  those  ceaseless  assumptions  under  which  it 
claims  our  kinship  with  itself.  We  cannot  escape 
them.  They  deal  with  us  as  with  the  people  not  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  of  the  twentieth;  as  with  men 
speaking  the  same  language,  responsive  to  the  same 
ideals,  answerable  to  the  same  laws,  moved  by  like 
motives,  destroyed  by  the  evils  and  quickened  and 
enriched  by  the  blessings  that  are  visitant  wherever  the 
thought  of  God  has  a  practical  reality  and  conscience 
a  social  significance.  To  reorganize  our  life  outside  of 
the  whole  congeries  of  institutions  and  assumptions 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  197 

in  which  our  age  has  involved  us  is  as  unthinkable 
as  to  reorganize  ourselves  outside  of  the  laws  which 
express  the  conservation  of  energy  or  the  force  of 
gravity.  Even  to  violate  them  is  to  call  them  into 
play;  to  oppose  them  is  but  to  affirm  them. 

We  will  therefore  deal  with  our  problems  —  tragic 
and  excessive  as  they  are  —  not  merely  as  a  modern 
people,  but  in  conformity  with  the  modern  spirit,  - 
a  somewhat  different  thing.  To  talk,  in  an  age  like 
ours,  of  not  educating  any  particular  class  of  human 
beings  or  of  deliberately  holding  any  fraction  or  race 
of  men  at  a  permanently  lower  level  of  industrial  or 
political  opportunity  is  to  talk  a  language  as  stale  — 
and  as  pathetic  —  as  that  of  the  complacent  memorial 
upon  the  coffin  of  an  Egyptian  mummy.  We  are  not 
bound  to  assume  equalities  which  do  not  exist,  but  we 
cannot  arbitrarily  fix  the  status  of  inequality  from 
without.  The  thing  cannot  be  done.  It  cannot  be 
done  except  in  the  terms  of  general  law  and  in  the 
forms  of  our  common  institutions.  So  to  adjust  and 
revamp  our  general  laws  as  to  make  them  the  ex 
pression  and  instrument  of  arbitrary  classifications 
is  to  habituate  them  to  artificial  discriminations  and  to 
re-create  them  upon  an  undemocratic  basis.  A  dis 
crimination  put  into  the  law  is  a  discriminatory  law; 
a  discriminating  law,  in  a  democratic  society,  is  not 
a  law,  but  a  revision  of  the  law  at  the  command  of  the 
minority.  That  which  may  have  been  so  rewritten  and 
reaffirmed  is  not  the  limitation  of  a  particular  class, 
but  the  limitation  of  the  universal  basis  upon  which, 
and  within  which,  the  inter-relations  of  all  men  have 
been  established  and  expressed. 


198  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

The  essential  issue  is  not  the  negro  at  all.  He  is 
comparatively  of  little  significance  except  as  the  humble 
occasion  and  instrument  of  the  processes  through 
which  the  South  is  defining  and  establishing  her  con 
ceptions  of  society  and  is  determining  her  relations  to 
the  country  at  large,  to  the  world,  and  to  democracy. 
The  fundamental  issue  is  not  what  we  will  do  with  the 
negro,  but  what  we  —  with  the  negro  as  the  incident 
or  provocation  of  our  readjustments  —  will  do  with 
our  institutions.  With  the  negro  —  and  with  the 
historic,  political,  and  industrial  associations  which  he 
involves  —  as  its  basis,  the  resistive  reaction  to  which 
I  have  referred  may  draw  the  South,  in  its  recoil  from 
the  pressure  of  a  democratic  age,  more  and  more  within 
itself,  may  intensify  its  separateness  and  its  isolation, 
may  provincialize  its  mind,  may  harden  and  con 
firm  its  life  within  the  closer  and  more  persistent 
forms  of  a  merely  sectional  development.  Or  the  life 
of  the  South,  responding  —  as  I  believe  to  be  inevitable 
—  to  the  inward  forces  of  a  reaction  which  shall  be 
not  negative  but  affirmative,  will  enter  into  ever  larger 
and  closer  relations  with  the  strong  and  advancing 
spirit  of  our  country  and  our  generation. 

The  recognition  of  the  rights — civil,  political,  indus 
trial —  of  the  negro  race,  need  involve  no  invasion  of 
our  social  autonomy  or  our  race  integrity;  our  "social " 
segregation  need  involve  no  invasion  of  the  negro's 
political  or  civil  rights.  The  South  will  realize  that,  as 
it  seeks  to  move  forward  through  the  forms  of  its  own 
free  self-determination,  its  rejection  of  the  principle  of 
free  self-determination  in  the  development  of  any  sub 
ordinate  group  may  establish  those  legal  precedents  of 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  199 

discrimination  and  may  set  to  work  within  the  world  those 
broader  popular  revulsions  under  which  its  own  liberties 
may  be  redefined.  That  such  contingencies  are  improb 
able  does  not  destroy  the  subtle  pressure  of  the  social 
situation  they  suggest.  Some  of  the  profoundest  forces 
of  social  life  reside  within  things  which  do  not  happen 
and  within  circumstances  which  cannot  arise.  In  the 
sensitive  psychology  of  human  aggregates  there  is  a 
conscience  toward  the  impossible  which  is  perhaps 
unneeded  as  a  constraint,  but  which,  like  the  shadowy 
intimations  of  a  religion  beyond  duty,  keeps  the  path 
way  clearer.  For,  turning  to  the  positive  aspect  of 
the  contention,  it  is  at  least  obvious  —  obvious  as  a  cir 
cumstance  which  is  ever  arising  and  as  a  force  which 
is  ever  operating  —  that  in  so  far  as  we  shall  choose 
as  the  forms  of  our  own  free  self-determination  those 
and  only  those  which  involve  the  free  self-determination 
of  our  included  groups,  the  free  activity  of  each  must 
advance  and  fulfil  our  own.  Within  the  very  life  of 
each,  the  choosing  and  fulfilling  of  its  liberty  instinc 
tively  becomes  the  choosing  and  affirming  of  our  de 
velopment  as  the  security  and  theatre  of  its  growth. 
No  true  freedom  can  retard  our  freedom.  Every  lib 
erated  capacity  must  contribute  both  its  capacity  and 
its  liberty  to  ours. 


Such  a  policy,  moreover,  will  draw  into  the  pro 
cesses  of  our  self-development  the  forces  that  are  with 
out  as  well  as  the  forces  that  are  within.  It  will  rep 
resent  the  answer  of  hospitality  to  hospitality.  The 
humanizing  and  democratizing  forces  of  our  age  may 


200 


THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 


through  such  a  policy  find  within  us  the  forms  of  their 
proper  movement,  the  unobstructed  channels  of  their 
accomplishment.  Their  streams,  as  we  thus  direct 
them,  will  flow  naturally  within  our  own,  —  turning 
the  mill-wheels  of  our  social  commerce.  This  is  the 
lesson  of  all  science.  Out  of  adaptation  comes  our 
conquest.  Why  be  thwarted  and  divided  by  the 
waters,  when  they  may  be  made  to  unite  us,  —  or 
delayed  by  currents  which  may  advance  us?  Why 
oppose  ourselves  to  tendencies  and  forces  of  our 
time  which,  admitted  within  the  processes  of  our 
development,  will  serve  our  well-being  and  advance 
our  happiness?  The  powers  of  that  new  coercion 
which  some  would  persuade  us  to  distrust,  may  be 
accepted  and  transmitted  within  our  progress  as 
new  and  kindly  energies  of  welfare.  The  influences 
from  without  may  give  us  service.  Our  life,  put  into 
full  accord  with  the  moving  and  determining  princi 
ples  of  our  age,  will  find  in  their  contact  not  a  force  of 
upheaval  —  a  damaging  contagion  of  alarm  —  but  a 
source  of  control  and  steadiness.  A  new  sense  of 
security,  a  new  consciousness  of  truth  and  peace, 
comes  to  those  who  stand  against  the  background  of 
the  actual  world  and  the  immediate  hour,  within  the 
flow  and  context  of  universal  forces,  asking  no  benefits 
of  artifice,  but  rightful  claimants  upon  the  cooperation 
of  the  common  stars  and  the  universal  will.  Every 
man  who  asks  an  arbitrary  or  unnatural  favor  sur 
renders  something  of  his  birthright;  for  the  birthright 
of  every  genuine  social  factor  is  not  "immunity,"  but 
the  tonic  power  of  the  fair  chance,  —  is  not  "privilege," 
but  democracy. 


x  THE   NEW   COERCION  201 

In  our  departure  from  our  detachment  and  our 
isolation  we  but  withdraw  ourselves  from  a  false  centre 
and  occupy  —  within  a  full  horizon  —  the  real  centre 
at  which  the  powers  of  our  age  converge.  All  that 
men  are  doing  becomes  now  of  advantage  to  us.  We 
not  only  can  "get  the  news"  more  perfectly,  but  we 
are  at  the  operative,  effective  point  of  distribution  for 
ideas,  for  labor,  for  wealth,  for  culture,  —  yes,  for 
righteousness;  for  the  discipline  of  life  as  well  as  its 
quality  is  deepened  by  its  more  varied  contacts.  All 
that  is  of  service  anywhere  serves  us.  All  that  is  truly 
believed  anywhere,  delivers  us,  —  whether  that  faith 
be  economic,  or  political,  or  religious.  Ours  is  a  great 
task,  but  within  the  harness  of  this  task  we  thus  put 
the  very  world  to  work. 

The  distinctive  genius  of  any  age,  its  spirit,  its  as 
cendant  impulse,  is  perhaps  the  mightiest  social  asset 
available  in  the  development  of  classes  and  peoples. 
In  a  period,  like  our  own,  of  general  and  efficient 
communications,  its  power  is  the  more  significant. 
It  is  the  waiting  reservoir,  the  dynamic  heritage  of 
every  political  or  social  group.  Its  operation  is  so 
bewildering  in  its  energy  and  complexity  that  its 
very  existence  is  at  times  forgotten;  but  the  peoples 
who  use  it,  who  are  wise  enough  to  put  it  to  work  for 
them  and  within  them,  must  prevail.  To  accept  its 
service  is  not  necessarily  to  accept  its  evils.  To  admit 
its  cooperations  is  not  blindly  to  surrender  to  its  per 
versities.  In  some  respects  its  teaching  is  not  admirable, 
and  in  certain  other  respects  its  practice  is  less  admi 
rable  than  its  teaching.  And  yet  the  power  with  which 
to  fight  the  evil  of  this  age  does  not  lie  in  some  virtue 


202  THE   BASIS    OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  an  age  departed,  but  in  some  higher  power  of  this, 
-  in  some  relevant  and  effectual  truth  of  our  own  abun 
dant  moment.  The  armory  is  full.  The  weapons  are 
given  into  our  hands.  To  take  the  part  of  our  age 
against  its  evils  is  to  serve  our  age  as  well  as  to  serve 
our  country;  but  to  reject  the  gift  of  the  finer  uses  of 
our  generation,  to  shut  out  those  deeper  forces  which 
give  to  our  time  its  distinctive  character,  is  to  serve 
neither  our  country  nor  our  age,  —  is  to  deprive  the 
South  of  that  accumulated  and  collective  energy  of 
accomplishment  which  is  the  heritage  of  every  modern 
state.  To  throw  such  power  away  is  to  be  immeasur 
ably  poorer,  wisely  to  accept  it  is  to  be  measurably 
stronger. 

Nor  need  we  fear  that  when  fully  accepted  within  our 
life  and  directly  at  work  within  our  growth  it  will  destroy 
the  strong  in  the  interest  of  the  weak,  —  that  it  will 
fulfil  every  prophecy  made  by  every  Abolitionist  in  its 
name,  or  make  valid  every  deduction  from  its  postulates 
that  the  morbid  have  suggested.  For  its  canons  are 
those  both  of  democracy  and  of  science,  of  reality  as 
well  as  freedom.  That  instinct  for  liberty  which  is 
working  within  the  social  energy  of  our  period  is  tense 
—  as  answering  to  the  nerve  of  its  self-control  —  with 
the  sense  of  truth.  Of  the  far  future  we  cannot  predict. 
We  do  not  and  cannot  see.  We  can  only  observe, 
and  think,  and  take  counsel  one  of  another  as  to  a  way 
strangely  difficult  and  dark.  But  it  would  seem  as 
safe  to  trust  the  power  of  truth,  of  the  sheer  actuality 
of  the  forces  that  lie  within  our  scene,  as  to  trust  the 
policies  of  freedom.  A  civilization  which  in  this  age 
cannot  commit  itself  into  the  hands  of  the  truth  and  into 


x  THE  NEW  COERCION  203 

the  keeping  of  liberty,  without  attempting  "private 
arrangements"  in  behalf  of  its  institutions,  contains 
no  peril  so  great  as  its  own  self-doubting  heart. 
"Things  are  what  they  are  and  the  consequences  of 
them  will  be  what  they  will  be;  why  then  should  we 
desire  to  be  deceived?"  l 

That  the  deeper  spirit  of  the  South,  responding  to 
the  forces  that  encompass  us,  will  accept  the  processes 
of  reality  and  liberty  as  processes  of  its  own  develop 
ment,  I  do  not  doubt.  Consciously  —  and  in  large 
part  unconsciously  —  it  has  done  so.  Its  instinctive 
nationality  is  sound.  Its  loyalty  to  the  country  and 
to  our  time  is  genuine.  The  vitality  and  scope  of  its  af 
firmative  reaction,  under  the  touch  of  the  new  coercion 
which  enfolds  it,  must  be  measured  not  by  the  stand 
ard  of  a  conceivable  abstract  attainment,  but  in 
the  light  of  its  history  and  its  conditions.  For  its 
difficulties  are  real  and  the  internal  grounds  of  its 
negative  reaction  will  long  persist.  To  recognize  them 
is  not  to  despair.  To  underestimate  them  will  con 
tribute  neither  to  their  reduction  nor  to  their  postpone 
ment.  To  attempt  to  see  them  clearly,  to  measure 
adequately  the  principles  which  move  within  them, 
and  the  ends  to  which  they  minister,  may  itself  con 
tribute  to  the  correction  of  the  detachment  and  isola 
tion  they  invite. 

Conscious  of  the  contact  of  its  age,  the  popular  mind 
of  the  South  —  seeking  relief  from  its  unquiet  —  will 
strike  again  and  again,  and  sometimes  with  success, 
at  this  or  that  fancied  occasion  of  disturbance.  It 

1  Quoted  from  Bishop  Butler,  by  Matthew  Arnold,  in  "Last  Essays 
on  Church  and  Religion,"  p.  304. 


204  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

will  give  much  sympathy  to  this  or  that  attack  upon  some 
justly  offending  conception  of  the  negro  or  upon  some 
phrase  or  section  of  the  national  Constitution.  Such 
impulses,  however  mistaken,  cannot  be  answered  by 
a  misconception  of  their  earnestness  or  by  a  misstate- 
ment  of  their  motive.  They  are  sometimes  used, 
indeed,  —  as  are  all  popular  impulses,  —  by  unworthy 
men  for  selfish  ends.  But  the  forces  which  they  rep 
resent  are  part  of  the  legitimate  psychology  of  our 
situation  —  as  inevitable  and  as  intelligible  as  any 
of  the  social  reactions  of  our  period.  Their  corrective 
will  be  chiefly  found  not  in  any  explicit  criticism  or 
direct  attack  so  much  as  in  that  other  reaction,  that 
affirmative  response  to  the  larger  horizon  of  our  affairs, 
upon  which  I  have  dwelt  so  fully.  It  is  under  the 
instruction  of  its  tendencies  that  the  popular  mind 
will  at  length  perceive  the  full  significance  of  the  forces 
in  which  we  are  involved.  It  is  this  positive  and 
affirmative  reaction  which  will  at  length  draw  our 
public  opinion  within  the  sway  of  the  conviction  that 
to  end  the  instrument  of  our  unrest  the  South  must 
needs  repeal  (if  she  would  dwell  apart)  not  this  or  that 
clause  of  a  formal  Constitution,  but  the  very  genius 
and  quality  of  her  time;  that  such  clauses  are  but 
symbols  of  a  deeper  agency;  that  this  agency  is  the 
age  itself  —  with  its  imperious  conceptions  and  its 
exhaustless  capacity  for  their  distribution;  that  these 
powers  are  effective  not  because  their  only  sources  are 
without,  but  because  their  seat  is  also  here  within,  - 
the  South  herself  in  her  deeper  nature  and  her  more 
intimate  desire  being  quick  with  the  sense  of  nationality 
and  humanity. 


x  THE   NEW   COERCION  205 

The  old  coercion  which  was  ended  by  the  instinct  of 
liberty  in  the  world  has  been  succeeded  by  the  new, 
—  the  new,  which,  as  the  scene  changes,  is  now  that 
same  liberty's  coercive  form.  Every  moment  is  its 
instrument.  Every  phase  of  progress  is  its  minister. 
Every  invention  of  mechanics  or  discovery  of  science 
is  an  article  of  its  irresistible  conspiracy.  Through 
every  fugitive  journal  or  published  book,  every  rail 
road  or  telegraph,  every  exchange  of  commerce  or  ideas, 
every  national  or  international  debate,  it  is  ending  the 
isolation  and  the  detachment  of  social  groups  and  is 
impelling  their  reorganization  within  its  larger  and 
freer  unity.  The  forces  of  this  coercion  have,  as  they 
touch  the  South,  no  partial  or  discriminating  interest 
in  any  weaker  or  included  group,  save  as  we  ourselves 
may  make  such  a  group  (or  our  adjustment  to  such 
a  group)  the  point  at  which  the  free  and  normal  move 
ments  of  democracy  and  equity  are  confounded  or 
arrested.  They  can  challenge  us  through  any  weaker 
race  only  in  the  event  that  we,  through  it,  array  our 
selves  against  the  order  of  the  world.  They  are  not 
peculiarly  concerned  with  such  a  race  (nor,  let  us  re 
member,  in  any  partial  or  arbitrary  sense  with  us), 
but  with  the  free  coursing  through  free  channels  of  the 
total  beneficence  of  their  currents  to  the  fertilization 
and  enrichment  of  mankind. 

Because  they  are  impartial,  because  they  ask  not  and 
give  not  by  private  contract,  but  upon  the  common 
terms  (terms  which  therefore  every  force  of  nature  and 
of  society  will  instinctively  protect)  they  are  imperious. 
To  oppose  ourselves  to  them  is  to  receive  them  into  our 
selves  not  as  powers  of  our  normal  development,  but 


206  THE    BASIS    OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  x 

as  powers  of  limitation,  maladjustment,  and  distortion. 
But  to  receive  them  with  an  answering  hospitality, 
to  accept  them  within  our  life  as  proper  forces  of  our 
development  and  our  happiness,  is  to  unite  them  to 
our  tasks  and  to  bind  them  within  our  progress  as  the 
forces  of  a  resistless  cooperation;  the  things  that  we 
do  will  be  done  well  —  as  by  the  labor  of  the  common 
will;  and  the  hopes  we  hold  will  bear  and  upbear 
the  seal  of  the  world  —  the  community  of  its  patience 
and  the  authority  of  its  mood. 


ASCENDANCY 


CHAPTER  XI 

ASCENDANCY 

I 

THE  true  ascendancy  of  any  social  group,  at  this  or 
that  period  of  its  history,  is  primarily  determined  — 
in  the  more  vital  sense  —  with  reference  to  the  former 
states  or  levels  of  its  own  life,  rather  than  with  refer 
ence  to  groups  outside  itself.  One  star  may  be  actually 
lower  than  another,  yet  if  its  progress  (as  compared 
with  each  of  its  preceding  moments)  be  upward  rather 
than  downward,  it  may  be  regarded  as  ascendant ; 
ascendant  not  in  relation  to  other  stars,  but  in  relation 
to  the  former  levels  of  its  own  advance. 

A  star  in  the  western  sky  may,  moreover,  be  actually 
higher  than  a  star  in  the  eastern,  and  may  therefore 
be  said  to  possess  a  relative  ascendancy  as  compared 
with  its  eastern  comrade.  But  this  actual  relative  as 
cendancy  may  (from  the  immediate  standpoint  of  the 
observer)  be  unconvincing,  —  for  the  western  star, 
though  at  the  higher  altitude,  may  be  declining,  and 
the  eastern  star,  though  at  the  lower  altitude,  may  be 
slowly  rising  —  passing  its  former  levels  and  ascendant 
over  its  older  limits. 

The  illustration  is  but  partially  applicable  to  the 
phenomena  of  collective  growth,  and  yet  it  may  serve 
to  suggest  a  vital  though  a  somewhat  neglected  sense 
in  which  the  ascendancy  of  social  groups  may  be  con 
sidered.  For  the  fact  of  deepest  significance  in  refer- 

209 


2io  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

ence  to  every  human  aggregate  is  the  relative  status 
of  its  development  as  compared  with  the  former  states 
or  stages  of  its  own  advance;  it  is  this  test  which 
indicates  its  growth  or  its  decline.  Here  necessarily 
is  the  real  basis  of  the  distinction  between  an  advancing 
and  a  decaying  group,  between  decadent  and  ascendant 
peoples.  The  national  or  social  aggregate  which  is 
slowly  slipping  below  the  levels  of  its  former  life,  which 
is  so  using  the  capital  of  its  moral  and  economic  forces 
as  to  be  consuming  more  than  it  is  producing,  is  not 
in  the  organic  sense  entitled  to  the  deeper  distinctions 
of  ascendancy.  While  its  relative  position  —  as  con 
trasted  with  other  aggregates  —  may  be  incidentally 
superior,  it  is  in  fact  a  declining  power  —  representative 
of  excellences  which  possess  only  a  residual  dominion, 
and  carrying  within  its  own  life  the  now  prevailing 
forces  of  debility  and  decay. 

This  does  not  suggest  that  a  great  but  decadent 
people  may  not  be  for  generations  —  even  for  centuries 
—  relatively  nobler  and  stronger  than  a  people  weaker 
but  progressive.  Yet  it  does,  I  think,  suggest  that 
with  every  national  or  social  group,  however  great, 
the  question  of  supreme  concern  —  as  it  considers  its 
own  fertility,  efficiency,  and  happiness  —  is  not  the 
much  mooted  question  as  to  whether  or  not  it  is  superior 
to  some  other  nation  or  group,  but  the  question  as  to 
whether  its  own  experience  —  as  contrasted  with  the 
levels  of  its  former  progress  —  is  fairly  representative 
of  an  -ascendant  life.  With  every  organic  structure, 
personal  or  social,  the  health  and  soundness  of  the  life 
itself  is  thus  the  primary  basis  of  its  ascendancy.  It  is 
doubtless  interesting  and  profitable  to  compare  our 


xi  ASCENDANCY  211 

civilization  with  the  civilization  of  Japan;  it  is,  how 
ever,  equally  interesting  and  even  more  profitable  that 
we  should  compare  our  own  present  civilization  with 
its  past,  that  we  should  measure  by  this  test  its  vital 
soundness  as  well  as  its  versatility  and  wealth,  and 
that,  thereupon,  we  should  contribute  what  we  may 
to  those  popular  capacities  for  clear  thinking  and  right 
feeling  which  must  largely  constitute  the  forces  of  our 
self-correction.  This  is  not  to  admit  the  thought  of 
failure  or  decay.  It  is  but  to  emphasize  the  thought 
that  so  long  as  our  positive  ascendancy  is  secure,  our 
relative  ascendancy  —  as  contrasted  with  other  peoples 
—  need  not  primarily  concern  us,  and  that  when  our 
positive  ascendancy  is  gone,  and  our  star  declines 
upon  its  descending  pathway,  no  concern,  however 
serious,  can  give  to  our  relative  ascendancy  the  signifi 
cance  and  the  distinction  we  would  crave.  To  pre 
vail  will  have  little  meaning  when  we  have  ceased  to 
prevail  against  ourselves. 

II 

(And  yet,  inasmuch  as  the  precise  parity  of  social 
groups  is  practically  unthinkable,  some  groups  being 
actually  stronger  or  weaker  than  other  groups,   it  is 
/  inevitable  that  the  question  of  the  relative  ascendancy 
S  of  one  nation  or  section  or  race,  as  contrasted  with  other 
^nations  or  sections  or  races,  should  persistently  recur. 
Not   that   the  issue  in  its   totality  can  in  every  case 
be  finally  determined.     For  a  particular  group  which 
may,  in  some  respects,  be  stronger  than  all  the  groups 
with  which   it  is  contrasted,   may,   in  other  respects, 


212  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

be  relatively  weaker.  One  nation  may  be  ascendant 
in  reference  to  one  range  of  qualities  or  one  species  of 
wealth,  yet  in  reference  to  other  standards  of  production 
or  other  phases  of  efficiency  it  may  be  immeasurably 
inferior.  The  question  must  be  answered,  moreover, 
in  relation  to  the  varied  forms  of  social  strain  to  which 
peoples  are  subjected,  and  in  relation  to  the  conditions 
and  the  environment  of  the  specific  age  in  which  the 
contrasted  groups  must  play  their  part.  Certain 
forms  of  social  attainment  may  indeed  be  extremely 
difficult,  may  illustrate  fine  and  rare  powers  of  artistic 
enthusiasm  or  collective  industry,  yet  they  may  be- 
in  the  actual  context  of  our  present  struggle  —  so 
irrelevant  as  to  represent  no  important  capacity  for 
success.  Other  qualities  of  other  groups  may  be  so 
aptly  and  definitely  "timed  for  the  race,"  so  over 
whelmingly  and  directly  "practical,"  so  strung  and 
tuned  with  the  sense  of  the  immediate  industrial  or 
physical  encounter,  as  to  promise  much  for  the  earlier 
periods  of  the  struggle,  but  to  promise  little  for  those 
longer  and  severer  stages  which  test  the  factor  of  re 
serve,  the  resources  of  their  self-control,  the  slow  wisdom 
of  their  moral  steadiness  and  their  spiritual  patience. 
Ascendancy  at  one  point  may  not  involve  ascendancy 
at  others.  The  problem  —  as  with  almost  all  social 
problems  —  possesses  its  complexities  and  confusions. 
And  yet  to  be  ascendant  in  relation  to  other  groups  — 
ascendant  not  over  them  but  among  them  —  is,  to 
some  appreciable  degree,  one  of  the  most  elementary 
and  persistent  of  our  social  passions. 

Not  infrequently,  however,  the  pursuit  of  ascendancy, 
because   conceived    in    false    and    destructive    terms, 


xi  ASCENDANCY  213 

has  itself  involved  the  embarrassment  if  not  the  de 
cadence  of  the  aspiring  group.  It  would  be  interesting 
to  inquire  to  what  extent  the  policies  upon  which  modern 
Spain  depended  for  her  relative  advantage,  resulted 
in  her  poverty,  how  far  the  cultural  isolation  of  ancient 
Greece  contributed  to  her  decay,  and  to  what  extent 
the  military  preoccupations  of  the  Empire  resulted  in 
the  decline  of  Roman  life  and  the  ultimate  deterioration 
of  the  Roman  state.  And  yet  we  may  not  forget  that, 
in  some  of  its  forms,  the  struggle  for  ascendancy  has 
often  seemed  to  be  but  a  phase  of  the  struggle  for  exist 
ence,  peoples  like  individuals  being  sometimes  so  sharply 
confronted  with  the  challenge  of  opposition  that  they 
have  been  forced  to  answer  to  the  alternative  "  prevail 
or  die."  Rightly,  therefore,  to  divide  the  issues  of 
ascendancy,  to  claim  without  encroachment  and  to 
prevail  without  oppression,  —  to  choose  and  to  pursue 
only  those  courses  which  are  the  pathways  of  a  right 
eous  self-expression,  to  reject  the  constricting  and 
narrowing  forms  of  false  advantage,  and  to  attain  to 
true  power  and  to  the  horizons  of  a  real  and  service 
able  eminence  —  this  is  the  problem  again  and  again 
presented  to  national  and  social  groups. 

Within  the  life  of  our  Southern  States  the  problem 
has  assumed  at  least  two  forms.  The  representative 
people  of  the  South  have  been  conscious  of  a  double 
task,  the  task  of  maintaining  their  general  ascendancy 
in  relation  to  the  included  group  comprising  the  negro 
population,  and  the  task  of  maintaining  their  political 
ascendancy  as  a  section  and  as  a  people  in  relation  to  the 
other  sections  of  the  United  States.  The  latter  aspect 
of  our  aspiration  now  seems  so  sadly  and  impossibly 


214  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

remote  that  we  are  sometimes  tempted  to  forget  those 
deeper  ambitions  for  a  national  leadership  which 
swayed  the  generations  immediately  preceding  our 
Civil  War.  The  leadership  and  the  prestige  of  Wash 
ington,  Jefferson,  Monroe,  James  Madison,  Patrick 
Henry,  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  established  a  general 
and  effectual  body  of  political  influence,  a  cumulative 
political  tradition,  which  made  the  South  preeminent 
if  not  paramount  in  the  earlier  institutional  development 
of  our  country.  That  glory  has  departed,  and  the 
South  now  sits  in  our  national  councils  clothed  in  but 
the  sorriest  measure  of  her  old  and  honored  state.1 

1  "I  speak  to  you  in  the  intimate  intonations  of  our  unfulfilled 
ambition.  For  we  have  an  unfulfilled  ambition  that  has  given  a  deep 
seriousness  to  our  lives.  Of  course,  I  do  not  speak  of  personal  dis 
appointments.  .  .  .  We  claim  a  larger  ambition  and  a  higher 
patriotism  than  this.  What  I  speak  of  is  an  unfulfilled  ambition  for 
our  country  —  an  ambition  for  these  States  and  these  people  as  a  part 
of  the  Union.  The  ambition  that  men  felt  in  the  time  of  Washington, 
of  Jefferson,  of  Marshall  —  this  is  what  I  mean.  They  and  their 
fellows  wrought  out  their  high  wish.  Our  wish,  equally  high,  we  have 
not  wrought  out ;  —  and  that  is  our  sorrow.  How  has  the  South 
fallen  in  the  life,  in  the  thought,  in  the  conduct  of  the  Republic,  since 
their  time !  If  we  have  not  been  disinherited,  we  are  yet  almost 
strangers  in  the  house  of  our  fathers.  Why  are  we  not,  why  may  we 
not  become,  leaders  in  our  country's  progress?  "  —  From  an  address 
by  Walter  H.  Page,  of  North  Carolina,  at  the  Conference  for  Educa 
tion  in  the  South,  Birmingham,  Ala.,  April  27,  1904;  Report  of  the 
Proceedings,  p.  99. 

Yet  in  the  view,  sometimes  suggested,  that  the  South  will  find  this 
serious  accession  of  political  influence  in  the  merely  external  division 
of  her  party  support,  I  cannot  concur.  I  see  no  large  or  wholesome 
political  liberation  or  political  development  in  the  States  like  Ken 
tucky,  Maryland,  and  Missouri,  where  close  party  divisions  have 
been  effected.  Serious  political  influence  will  be  dependent  upon 
deeper  forces  and  on  more  far-reaching  conditions  than  the  mere  fact 
of  "voting  for  the  other  party,"  —  especially  among  those  who  have 


xi  ASCENDANCY  215 

There  are  many  explanations  of  her  decline;  there 
are  many  theories  as  to  the  essential  secret  of  her 
restoration;  and  yet  the  present  facts  touch  us  with  a 
melancholy  not  wholly  lost  in  the  stirring  sense  of  our  new 
achievements  and  our  brighter  future.  A  crude  numer 
ical  supremacy  would  do  no  one  any  good.  A  hard  and 
coercive  ascendancy,  based  upon  a  mere  count  of 
heads,  on  the  clever  perpetuation  of  some  mechanical 
or  tactical  advantage,  or  on  some  shrewd  association  of 
selfish  interests,  would  involve  no  true  renewal  of  our 
political  or  social  power.  But  a  free  ascendancy,  based 
upon  capacities  for  leadership  which  the  nation  might 
accept  as  indispensable  to  her  welfare,  —  an  ascendancy 
of  service  rather  than  an  ascendancy  of  force,  —  would 
involve  both  the  return  of  our  prestige  and  the  renewal 
of  all  the  deeper  and  happier  springs  of  our  confidence 
and  pride. 

Such,  after  all,  is  the  only  form  or  phase  of  ascend 
ancy  which  really  matters,  or  which  —  in  a  democracy 

—  can  have  any  true  security  or  ultimate  significance. 
The  only  way  in  which  we  can  become  strong  within 
the  nation  is  to  become  really  necessary  to  its  life. 
When  —  in  the  soundness  and  health  of  our  industrial 

been  inclined  to  the  opinion  that  (at  the  South)  the  Democratic  party 

—  as  contrasted  with  the  local  Republican  organization  —  has  not 
been  right  because  it  has  been  numerous,  but  has  been  numerous  be 
cause,  in  spite  of  its  many  blunders,  it  has  upon  the  whole  been  right. 
That  this  party  precedence  is  now  to  be  subjected  to  the  tests  of  a 
wiser  Republican  appeal  and  a  higher  party  competition  must  have 
its  wholesome  influence.     With  the  party  questions  involved  I  am  to 
deal  more  fully,  however,  in  the  volume,  "Issues,  Southern  and  Na 
tional."     In  the  present  chapter  I  am  concerned  with  conditions  that 
seem  to  me  to  be  more  fundamental  than  those  of  our  immediate 
party  politics. 


2i6  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

development,  in  the  fertility  and  efficacy  of  our  ideas, 
in  the  higher  sagacity  and  the  personal  devotion  of  our 
political  leadership  —  we  have  that  to  contribute  which 
our  country  can  find  with  us  but  which  it  cannot  or  does 
not  so  fully  find  elsewhere,  its  powers  will  once  more 
quicken  our  hands  and  our  hands  will  again  execute 
its  larger  tasks.  The  agricultural  ascendancy  of  the 
middle  West  is  free,  is  not  artificially  wrested  from  any 
body,  but  actually  bestowed  by  the  suffrages  of  those 
who  buy  its  grain,  —  who  buy  it  because  they  have 
learned  that  the  consummate  capacities  which  have 
given  themselves  to  the  problems  of  its  growth  and  its 
transportation  have  proven  their  indispensable  and 
peculiar  fitness  for  the  feeding  of  the  world.  The  merr 
cantile  and  banking  ascendancy  of  New  York  is  not 
secured  by  trick  or  artifice  or  negotiation ;  it  is  bestowed 
and  conferred  by  those  who  trade.  Tricks  have  been 
used  in  its  behalf  (and  always  to  its  eventual  injury), 
but  the  only  real  basis  of  its  ascendancy  lies  in  its  essen 
tial  service  —  its  proved  and  indispensable  utility  —  to  the 
commercial  and  industrial  interests  of  the  United  States. 
The  recent  political  ascendancy  of  the  North  (I  make 
no  exclusive  reference  to  any  particular  political  party) 
has  been  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  the  North,  not  being 
overburdened  by  the  preoccupations  of  such  a  local  issue 
as  the  negro  has  presented,  has  been  freer  to  deal  with 
national  issues,  freer  to  develop  capacities  for  national 
and  international  administration,  and  has  therefore 
ruled  not  only  through  the  larger  masses  of  her  popula 
tion,  but  through  the  larger  range  of  her  experience. 
Our  common  necessities  have  yielded  the  suffrages  of 
her  support. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  217 

The  ascendancy  —  as  a  whole  —  of  any  particular 
section  in  relation  to  other  sections  may  not  recur.  It 
is  perhaps  better  that  it  should  not.  For  each  section, 
however,  through  the  training  of  its  special  capacities 
in  the  field  of  its  special  experience,  to  represent  some 
particular  phase  of  ascendancy  within  the  common 
councils  of  the  country,  would  contribute  to  a  sectional 
"balance  of  power"  and  to  a  broader  sense  of  participa 
tion  which  would  deepen  and  enrich  the  consciousness 
of  our  unity  as  a  people.  As  each  section  or  quarter  of 
our  country  finds  an  ascendancy  of  service  based  upon 
its  peculiar  capacities  and  opportunities,  and  expressed 
through  its  indisputable  relation  to  the  national  welfare, 
its  position  of  eminence  and  honor  need  not  be  self- 
proclaimed, —  it  will  be  bestowed;  and  its  federate  and 
authoritative  relation  to  the  common  life  will  be  instinc 
tively  acknowledged.  Has  the  South  a  field  of  experi 
ence  peculiarly  her  own?  Has  the  South,  therefore,  a 
peculiar  opportunity  for  the  development  of  distinctive 
capacities  and  for  the  contribution  of  an  indispensable 
service  ?  Has  she  a  training  ground  for  forms  of  states 
manship  of  which  this  country  in  its  national  progress 
and  in  its  international  relations  has  especial  need? 
Has  she  a  chance  to  do  things  which  no  other  section 
has  quite  the  chance  to  do  so  well?  And  is  there  for 
her  —  in  the  special  capacities  and  the  eminent  suc 
cess  through  which  she  may  perform  her  immediate 
task  —  a  possible  opportunity  to  regain  her  place  of 
influence  in  relation  to  other  and  more  varied  issues  of 
our  national  development? 


2i8  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

Ill 

As  one  looks  broadly  to-day  over  the  scene  of  national 
enterprises  and  of  international  policy,  one  can  hardly 
fail  to  note  two  general  and  conspicuous  movements 
in  the  development  of  contemporary  peoples.  The  first 
is  a  movement  of  comprehension  and  inclusion.  The 
large  political  aggregates  are  growing  larger.  The 
small  are  disappearing  or  growing  smaller.  The  phase 
of  this  tendency  which,  for  the  South,  has  an  especial 
interest,  is  that  the  isolation  of  weaker  groups  is  being 
broken  up,  and  the  "inferior"  peoples  are  being  every 
where  included  and  reorganized  within  the  life  of 
stronger  aggregates.  The  weaker  lands  are  not  being 
let  alone ;  they  are  not  being  separated  unto  their  own 
boundaries  and  delivered  to  their  own  people. 

Into  the  ultimate  causes  of  such  a  movement  I  do  not 
here  inquire;  I  now  enter  into  no  discussion  of  its 
policy  or  its  ethics.  It  is  with  the  fact  that  I  would 
deal,  the  broad  outstanding  fact  that  (for  example) 
almost  every  man  has  a  government  in  Africa  except 
the  African,  and  that  all  round  the  world  the  weaker 
groups  and  the  backward  peoples  are  being  included 
within  the  limits  and  policies  of  the  stronger.  The 
one  rejected  policy  is  the  policy  of  political  segregation; 
the  one  prevalent  policy  is  the  policy  of  inclusion. 
Where  political  segregation  persists  and  the  movement 
for  inclusion  has  been  halted,  the  result  is  due  not  to 
political  disinclination,  but  to  strategic  defeat.  Di 
plomacy  has  not  yet  solved  the  problem  of  "ways  and 
means."  Its  plans  may  have  been  thwarted,  —  yet 
not  by  popular  rejection  at  home  nor  by  the  effectual 


xi  ASCENDANCY  219 

protest  of  the  weaker  group,  but  rather  by  another 
nation  and  a  competitive  diplomacy.  Its  policy  of 
encroachment  has  been  checked  only  by  another  of  the 
"leading  nations,"  representing  the  same  policy, 
eager  for  the  same  "burden,"  ready  for  the  same  ad 
ministrative  "inclusion." 

In  addition,  however,  to  this  movement  toward  the 
inclusion  and  comprehension  of  populations,  there  is 
also  proceeding  —  strangely  enough  —  a  movement 
toward  the  broader  distribution  of  power.  The  move 
ment  of  empire  is  coincident  with  a  movement  toward 
democracy.  The  two  movements  are  not  always  found 
within  the  same  territory,  but  they  overlap  at  many 
points  and  each  is  as  characteristic  of  our  period  as  the 
other.  Just  how  far  the  one  is  related  to  the  other  it 
would  be  difficult  to  say.  Perhaps  (aside  from  any 
question  of  individual  or  local  rights)  the  very  size  of  the 
huge  political  aggregates  which  the  movement  of  in 
clusion  is  creating,  has  impelled  the  extension  and 
development  of  the  local  basis  of  control.  Perhaps, 
after  all,  in  the  interest  of  the  efficiency  of  federal  ten 
dencies  it  has  become  advisable  to  rescue  the  adminis 
trative  organization  from  unwieldiness  and  inflexibility 
by  an  ever  broadening  distribution  of  the  centres  of  in 
terest  and  power.  At  any  rate  the  fact  is  clear.  The 
tendency  of  all  self-conscious  political  groups  is  essentially 
in  the  direction  of  a  larger  popular  control.  Great 
Britain,  Germany,  France  are  emphasizing  the  impor 
tance  of  their  colonial  units;  in  Germany  the  social 
ist  organization  now  represents  a  vote  of  more  than 
3,000,000  and  is  numerically  the  first  political  party  of 
the  Empire;  the  struggle  for  imperial  representation 


220  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

in  the  Russias  is  not  more  significant  than  the  previous 
possession  of  numberless  local  rights  which  have  not 
been  so  generally  reported;  to  India  and  South  Africa 
are  yielded  each  year  a  more  varied  representative 
authority;  Bulgaria  is  free;  concessions  to  the  demo 
cratic  movement  are  made  even  by  the  Sultan  at 
Constantinople ;  and,  beyond  the  Caucasus  and  the  Eu 
phrates,  Persia  itself  is  upon  the  eve  of  a  Constitution. 
I  would  exaggerate  the  scope  of  none  of  these  develop 
ments.  That  they  have  always  meant  what,  to  the 
average  American  mind,  they  naturally  suggest,  I 
would  be  the  last  to  declare.  Yet  they  represent  a 
tendency,  and  a  tendency  in  one  direction.  In  the  other 
direction,  be  it  noted,  in  the  direction  of  the  fundamental 
reversal  of  the  democratic  movement,  there  is  no  con 
scious  tendency  anywhere. 

We  are  confronted  therefore  by  two  significant  devel 
opments  in  our  immediate  history.  First,  there  is  the 
tendency  toward  inclusion,  the  movement  of  empire,  the 
gradual  incorporation  of  the  weaker  races  and  groups 
within  the  administrative  federation  of  the  stronger. 
Secondly,  there  is  the  movement  of  democracy,  the  ten 
dency  toward  the  broader  distribution  of  the  units  of 
control.  The  stronger  peoples  are  drawing  into  closer 
and  closer  relations  with  the  weaker,  and  yet  the  terms 
under  which  these  relations  are  established  and  expressed 
are  inevitably  tinged  and  colored  by  the  democratic 
assumptions  to  which  modern  society  is  increasingly 
committed.  The  movement  of  empire  is  indeed  modi 
fying  certain  of  our  older  notions  of  democracy,  correct 
ing  some  of  our  doctrinaire  conceptions  as  to  the  natural 
equality  of  men;  but  the  movement  of  democracy  is 


xi  ASCENDANCY  221 

modifying  even  more  deeply  some  of  our  older  notions  of 
empire,  is  correcting  the  legal  presumptions  of  inequal 
ity,  is  enforcing  the  conception  of  the  equality  of  rights 
before  the  law,  is  impressing  the  fact  of  the  social  re 
sponsibility  of  the  strong,  is  discouraging  and  slowly 
arresting  the  destructive  policies  of  exploitation,  and 
everywhere  commending  the  redemptive  and  construc 
tive  policies  of  equity,  order,  and  education.  It  is  no 
easy  problem,  —  this  problem  of  the  strong  living  with 
the  weak  (as  the  strong  have  resolved  to  do)  and  yet  so 
living  with  them  as  to  keep  faith  with  those  profounder 
interests  of  the  weak  which  are  also  the  interests  of  the 
strong,  —  so  living  as  to  assure  peace  without  inflicting 
desolation,  as  to  preserve  order  without  defeating  jus 
tice,  as  to  upbuild  a  state  which  will  express  the  life  of 
its  higher  groups  without  enfeebling  or  destroying  that 
waiting  manhood  of  weaker  peoples  which  itself  craves 
and  deserves  expression. 

We  ourselves  are  finding  this  problem  in  Cuba,  in 
Porto  Rico,  in  Hawaii,  in  Panama,  in  the  Philippines, 
just  as  England  is  finding  it  in  the  West  Indies,  in  India, 
Africa,  Australasia.  In  some  respects,  it  presents  just 
now  for  every  modern  government  the  supreme  question 
of  its  national  policy  and  its  international  relations. 
That  England  and  Germany  —  that  other  nationalities 
as  well  —  do  not  have  to  face  it  in  its  cold  and  literal 
forms,  that  they  can  govern  without  a  written  con 
stitution,  may  seem  to  obscure  or  to  postpone  the 
sharper  phases  of  the  "contradiction,"  but  it  does  not 
terminate  the  problem  in  its  essence,  nor  change  the 
essential  elements  of  the  administrative  task.  Tem 
porarily,  indeed,  the  task  is  immeasurably  simpler: 


222  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

through  this  or  that  period  of  wise  and  kindly  tutelage 
the  problem  may  appear  to  sleep;  but  this  sleep  is 
never  that  of  oblivion  or  death.  As  between  the  ten 
dencies  of  governmental  absolutism  and  the  tendencies 
of  popular  participation  the  latter  are  not  the  tendencies 
which  are  vanishing,  or  being  outgrown,  or  being  super 
seded  by  "more  modern  methods."  There  may  be  no 
written  constitution,  but  the  forces  which  antedate  our 
constitutions,  which  they  express  and  will  outlive, 
are  operative  within  the  scenes  and  factors  of  every 
administrative  situation.  They  are  presented  not 
merely  by  the  instincts  and  interests  of  the  included 
groups,  but  —  even  more  persistently  —  by  the  instincts, 
interests,  and  preferences  of  the  groups  including  them. 
The  issue  is  always  there.  For  the  stronger  race  so  to 
dwell  with  the  weaker  as  to  upbuild  a  common  state 
upon  the  basis  of  the  common  welfare  and  expressive 
of  the  common  happiness,  may  be  called  the  distinctive 
task  of  a  democratic  imperialism  or  of  an  imperial 
democracy ;  yet  it  is  —  in  either  case  —  the  supreme 
problem  just  now  challenging  the  political  capacity  of 
modern  peoples. 

IV 

Where,  peculiarly,  is  the  training  ground  —  so  far  as 
our  country  is  concerned  —  of  such  capacities  ?  The 
task  which  day  by  day  engages  us  in  our  Southern  States 
is  but  the  characteristic  problem  of  the  modern  world. 
It  confronts  us  in  phases  of  peculiar  difficulty,  for  each 
element  of  the  problem  is  presented  in  clear  and  insist 
ent  forms.  There  is  upon  one  hand  the  uncompromis 
ing  reality  of  the  negro,  in  his  inexperience,  his  weakness, 


xi  ASCENDANCY  223 

his  racial  contrasts;  there  is,  upon  the  other  hand,  the 
uncompromising  reality  of  the  Constitution,  both  in  the 
force  of  its  written  obligations  and  in  that  deeper  force 
which  our  own  instincts,  interests,  and  preferences  have 
accorded  it.  We  may  quarrel  with  its  details,  but  even 
after  we  had  repealed  them  (should  we  do  so)  the  opera 
tive  force  of  its  elementary  assumptions  —  of  our  own 
social  convictions  and  dispositions  —  would  create  the 
same  problem  and  reimpose  the  same  difficulties.  All 
the  essential  issues  presented  by  a  stronger  and  a  weaker 
race  within  the  administrative  household  of  a  demo 
cratic  state  would  still  confront  us.  To  repeal  an  ir 
ritation  or  an  annoyance  is  not  to  abolish  a  situation  or 
to  remove  an  issue  of  life.  We  have  to  do  with  a  situa 
tion  and  with  an  issue  of  life. 

To  face  this  problem  as  it  engages  us  or  as  we  are  en 
gaged  by  it,  and  to  deal  with  it  successfully,  is  to  meet 
not  only  a  necessity  of  our  welfare  but  that  special  task 
through  which  we  may  best  serve  our  country  and  our 
age.  Not  that  these  may  rightly  demand  of  us  a  neat 
and  mechanical  "solution,"  wrapped  within  the  easy 
formulas  of  a  political  panacea.  "The  great  problems 
of  experience  are  never  solved  in  any  mathematical  or 
final  sense.  They  are  solved  only  in  the  sense  that  life 
becomes  adjusted  to  them,  or  in  the  sense  that  their 
conflicting  or  complementary  elements  find  a  working 
adjustment  to  one  another,  an  adjustment  consistent  in 
larger  and  larger  measure  with  wisdom,  right,  happiness ; 
but  always  coincident  with  the  possibility  of  misconcep 
tion  and  with  recurrent  periods  of  acute  antagonism. 
The  issues  of  racial  cleavage,  like  the  issues  of  labor 
and  capital,  or  of  science  and  religion,  yield  to  no  pre- 


224  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

cise  formulas;  they  are  issues  of  life,  persistent  and 
irreducible.  And  yet  they  are  subject  to  approximate 
adjustments,  increasingly  righteous,  intelligent,  and 
effective,  and  yielding  an  increasing  measure  of  social 
peace,  of  industrial  cooperation,  of  individual  freedom 
and  happiness.  It  is  only  in  this  sense  that  the  word 
solution  is  employed.  Toward  the  establishment  of 
such  a  working  adjustment  of  the  factors  of  any  national 
problem,  it  is  well  to  labor  in  order  that  the  tasks  of 
American  life  may  become  the  occasions  of  a  keener 
and  more  widely  distributed  sense  of  social  obligation, 
a  larger  and  saner  political  temper,  a  purer  civic  devo 
tion,  rather  than  the  occasions  of  national  demoraliza 
tion."  l 

Such  a  progressive  and  approximate  solution  we  may 
advance  to  further  and  larger  stages  of  success.  To  do 
so  will  be  to  advance  our  institutions  in  their  efficiency 
and  our  country  in  its  promise.  So  to  further  these, 
so  to  play  our  part  in  reference  to  what  is  perhaps  the 
supreme  difficulty  in  our  national  experience,  will 
advance  the  vitality  of  our  own  relation  to  its  common 
welfare  and  the  indispensable  significance  of  our  service 
to  the  world  itself.  This  need  not  involve  our  exclusive 
absorption  in  a  local  issue.  To  accept  it  in  its  larger 
meaning,  in  the  spirit  of  our  fundamental  institutions, 
is  to  transform  it  from  a  local  issue  into  a  national 
opportunity.  To  deal  with  it  in  a  temper  un-American 
and  in  terms  repressive  and  provincial  is  to  localize  it 
and  to  be  localized  by  it ;  but  to  accept  it  and  to  deal 
with  it  as  the  men  of  a  practical  and  yet  a  democratic 

1  From  the  preface  to  the  author's  volume,  "The  Present  South," 
p.  ix. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  225 

age  is  to  be  employed,  through  it,  at  the  very  testing 
point  of  our  modern  spirit  and  of  our  national  institu 
tions.  There  is  no  strong  political  party  which  it  does 
not  embarrass  and  involve.  There  is  therefore  no  na 
tional  issue  and  no  area  within  our  national  boundaries 
which  it  does  not  affect.  We  may  dislike  the  task  and 
may  shrink  from  it,  may  much  prefer  to  deal  with  the 
issues  peculiar  to  other  localities  and  peoples,  but  we 
cannot  escape  it ;  it  is  the  problem  which,  in  the  phrase 
of  the  period,  is  "  up  to  us." 

What  is  the  alternative?  If  we  may  make  no  dem 
onstration  of  capacity  by  dealing  with  this  question, 
may  we  do  so  by  ignoring  it  ?  If  we  are  to  find  for  the 
South  no  distinction  of  leadership  or  eminence  of  service 
in  the  handling  of  our  own  task,  are  other  and  more 
general  tasks  likely  to  be  committed  to  our  keeping? 
If  we  fail,  by  bungling  or  preoccupation  or  neglect, 
in  doing  the  thing  that  is  at  hand,  —  if  we  sulk  at  our 
own  work,  or  weaken  idly  or  petulantly  beneath  its 
strain,  are  our  shoulders  the  more  likely  to  feel  the 
weight  and  honor  of  the  general  burden  ? 

V 

Much  has  been  accomplished.  And  yet  the  period  of 
time  is  so  brief  within  which  the  South  has  been  able 
to  deal  unobstructedly  with  the  conditions,  that  it  is 
inevitable  that  only  the  beginnings  of  an  adjustment 
should  appear.  Nothing  so  tempts  one  to  despair 
as  to  hear  some  distinguished  publicist  dwelling  plain 
tively  upon  "the  now  extended  trial"  which  has  been 
accorded  to  this  or  that  factor  in  the  situation.  So 


226  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

short  a  perspective,  a  pessimism  so  premature,  is  an 
injustice  both  to  the  South  and  to  the  negro.  It  is 
superficial  and  unhistorical.  Our  whole  case  has 
suffered  from  few  things  so  seriously  as  from  that  utter 
lack  of  social  imagination  (upon  the  part  of  many  of 
the  well  meaning  of  both  sections)  which  supposes  that 
the  vast  and  involved  confusions,  the  different  histories, 
the  conflicting  interests,  the  inevitable  suspicions,  the 
diverging  social  tendencies  and  political  affiliations 
of  two  wholly  contrasted  races  —  thrown  together  within 
a  fate  which  has  seemed  to  make  the  rights  of  each 
a  menace  to  the  security  of  the  other  —  could  be  com 
posed  within  a  couple  of  generations,  and  finally  and 
complacently  catalogued  in  some  cheerful  list  of  "  Pop 
ular  Misunderstandings  Rectified."  No;  these  issues 
run  deep  —  through  all  the  more  recent  soil  of  our  ad 
ventures  and  our  institutions  —  back  into  the  very  roots 
of  nature.  Their  processes  of  adjustment  must  be  those 
of  growth,  of  slow  approximation,  of  gradual  but  firm 
advance  into  a  clearer  appreciation  of  motives,  a 
broader  knowledge  of  life,  and  a  more  accurate  under 
standing  of  both  the  persistent  factors  in  the  problem 
given  us.  There  would  be  no  problem  if  the  negro  were 
not  a  negro ;  there  would  be  no  problem  if  this  age,  and 
this  country  —  which  is  its  characteristic  institutional 
expression  —  were  not  distinctively  democratic. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  South  is  not  likely  to  forget 
the  first,  —  that  we,  at  least,  are  always  likely  to  know 
that  the  negro  is  a  negro.  It  is  true :  and  yet  it  is  also 
true  that  the  South  has  sometimes  forgotten  (perhaps 
not  unnaturally)  that  the  rest  of  the  country  also  knows 
it.  The  fact  may  be  ignored  or  obscured  by  a  few, 


xi  ASCENDANCY  227 

but  the  average  multitudes  of  the  North  and  of  the 
modern  world  are  as  far  from  the  notion  that  the  negro 
is  but  a  white  man  in  a  darker  skin,  as  are  the  multi 
tudes  of  the  South  from  the  notion  that  the  negro  is  not 
a  man  at  all.  It  is  the  privilege  of  each  section,  if  it 
will  have  the  magnanimity  to  do  so,  to  judge  the  other 
not  by  the  small  eccentric  remnant  of  its  sentimentalists, 
but  by  the  sober  aggregate  of  its  collective  common 
sense.  The  world  knows  that  the  negro  is  a  negro; 
the  negro  knows  it,  and  rightly  declines  to  deny  it  or 
abjure  it.  Any  "solution"  which  ignores  it  would 
wrong  the  weak  as  well  as  the  strong,  for  it  would  yield 
its  inevitable  fruit  of  disappointment  and  reaction.  It 
is  an  element  of  the  problem  which  no  tendency  or 
inclination  of  our  age  would  have  us  to  forget,  but  which 
its  passion  for  reality  (the  age  being,  as  we  have  seen, 
an  age  of  science  as  well  as  an  age  of  democracy) 
would  command  us  to  regard.  To  call  the  weak  strong, 
to  call  the  ignorant  wise,  to  press  the  refinements  of 
Horatian  prosody  upon  those  whose  problem  is  bread, 
to  repose  government  in  the  hands  of  those  who  can 
naturally  have  no  instincts  concerning  it  except  to 
welcome  it  as  a  Santa  Claus  or  to  sell  it  as  a  bauble; 
ruthlessly  to  anticipate  capacities  in  the  untried  at  the 
expense  of  the  experience,  the  interests,  and  the  capaci 
ties  of  the  tried  —  is  to  touch  all  the  solid  integrities  of 
society,  the  assumptions  and  supports  of  its  elementary 
transactions,  with  a  vague  and  tottering  madness.  It 
is  what  the  South  will  not  do.  And,  what  is  just  now  of 
almost  equal  importance,  it  is  what  no  one  expects  the 
South  to  do. 


228  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

For  the  spirit  of  democracy  is  not  essentially  at  war 
with  the  spirit  of  reality.  If  it  be  in  conflict  with  the 
force  of  reality  to  call  the  weak  strong  and  the  ignorant 
wise,  it  is  equally  at  variance  with  reality  to  call  the 
strong  weak  and  the  wise  ignorant,  to  classify  a  weaker 
group  wholly  under  the  assumption  of  weakness,  and  — 
after  asking  it  to  grow  —  to  deal  to  the  individuals 
through  which  its  growth  appears,  the  same  ruthless 
repression  imposed  upon  the  most  irresponsible  of  their 
race.  This  the  South  has  not  wholly  done.  The  rec 
ognition  —  politically  as  well  as  industrially  —  of  the 
exceptional  negro  has  in  a  number  of  our  States  and  in 
many  of  our  communities  been  explicit.  The  familiar 
assumption  of  the  older  controversialist  of  the  North 
that  all  negroes  have  been  disfranchised  is  conspicu 
ously  unfounded.  And  yet  that  there  is  among  us  such 
a  tendency  is  evident  enough.  It  is  not  the  prevailing 
tendency;  it  is  checked  and  corrected  by  other  forces; 
but  it  is  sufficiently  powerful  and  representative  to  arouse 
the  concern  and  to  challenge  the  opposition  of  those 
within  the  South  who  desire  that  the  forces  of  reality 
shall  have  their  genuine  rather  than  their  spurious  ex 
pression. 

For  to  deal  alike  with  the  capable  and  the  incapable, 
to  make  no  appreciable  distinction  between  the  un 
worthy  and  the  worthy,  is  not  merely  to  deliver  the  better 
life  of  the  negro  to  a  sense  of  injury  and  humiliation, 
but  to  take  from  a  whole  race  one  of  the  deeper  incen 
tives  of  advance.  More  serious  still,  it  is  to  involve  all 
our  political  formulas  in  the  twist  and  tradition  of  un 
reality,  is  to  weaken  the  simplicity  and  directness  of 
their  meaning  in  the  average  mind  and  the  adminis- 


xi  ASCENDANCY  229 

trative  habit  of  the  stronger  race,  and  —  by  the  social 
reactions  attending  such  a  process  —  is  to  involve  the 
whole  body  of  our  popular  political  instincts  in  per 
versity  and  confusion.  I  have  so  frequently  indicated, 
in  this  volume  and  elsewhere,  the  reactive  injury  of 
arbitrary  methods  in  their  relation  to  the  stronger  group 
that  I  do  not  here  dwell  upon  them  further.  To  declare 
that  the  political  capacity  of  the  worthy  negro  is  not 
equal  to  that  of  the  illiterate  white  man  is  wholly  to 
confuse  the  issue.  The  statement  is  in  many  cases 
true,  though  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  how 
it  could  injure  the  political  capacity  of  the  illiterate  white 
man  for  us  to  demand  that  he  shall  "  qualify. "  *  And 

1  "  Illiteracy  is  not  a  crime,  but  literacy  is  a  duty.  It  is  a  duty  of  the 
individual  to  himself,  and  not  only  to  himself  but  to  the  State.  It  is 
for  the  welfare  of  all  that  every  man  should  be  able  to  read  the  legal 
papers  which  he  signs  and  the  laws  which  he  is  expected  to  obey. 
No  man  should  vote  who  cannot  read  the  ballot  which  he  casts.  The 
man  who  himself  has  fought  in  the  armies  of  the  State  should  be 
exempt  (as  having  already  served  his  apprenticeship  of  responsibility). 
He  should  be  excepted  either  by  specific  declaration  or  by  a  general 
provision  postponing  the  period  at  which  the  new  Constitution 
shall  become  effective.  ...  I  am  not  in  favor,  even  though  the 
individual  be  not  entitled  to  exemption  on  the  ground  of  military  ser 
vice  —  I  am  not  in  favor  of  surprising  any  man  into  the  forfeiture  of 
his  ballot.  The  State  should  be  reasonable  ...  but  she  should  also 
be  wise  in  relation  to  her  own  good.  Alabama's  percentage  of  illiteracy 
puts  her,  in  that  category,  almost  at  the  foot  of  the  list  of  States.  Shall 
she  remain  so  ?  I  am  not  now  impugning  the  voting  capacity  of  the 
illiterate  white  man;  he  is  usually  a  better  voter  than  the  illiterate 
negro;  and  he  is  sometimes  a  better  voter  than  some  of  the  white  men 
who  can  read  and  write.  But  I  am  arguing  for  the  welfare  of  the 
white  man  and  I  am  speaking  in  his  interest.  .  .  .  Does  he  not  need 
the  incentive  of  a  slight  educational  test  ?  Will  he  value  the  ballot  as 
he  should  if  we  continue  to  make  it  as  cheap  in  his  hands  as  ignorance 
itself  ?  Is  it  statesmanlike  to  declare,  as  the  State  platform  has  de 
clared,  that  the  Constitutional  Convention  —  chosen  by  the  people 
of  Alabama  for  the  consideration  of  this  whole  question  —  shall  be 


230  THE   BASIS   OF   ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

yet  the  essential  issue  is  not  at  all  an  issue  as  between  the 
relative  political  capacity  of  the  illiterate  white  man 
and  the  literate  negro,  or  between  this  class  and  that  of 
these  contrasted  races.  The  ballot  has  never  been  any 
where  withheld  or  bestowed  upon  the  subtle  grounds  of 
comparative  political  capacity.  We  do  not  withhold 
it  from  a  Russian  who  has  never  known  it,  to  bestow  it  on 
a  Frenchman  who  has  exercised  it  for  a  decade.  We  do 
not  decide,  before  awarding  it,  whether  it  is  safer  in  the 
hands  of  a  cultivated  Austrian  socialist  who  does  under 
stand  it  or  in  those  of  a  conservative  Austrian  peasant 
who  does  not.  Allegations  against  the  political  capacity 
of  excluded  classes  have  insistently  opposed  (with  more 
or  less  truth)  every  extension  of  the  suffrage  under 
every  modern  government;  and  yet  it  has  been  usually 
found  —  except  in  cases  in  which  the  admission  of  the 
ignorant  and  inexperienced  was  so  precipitate  and  so 
overwhelming  as  to  submerge  the  state  itself  (as  in  the 
regime  of  our  "Reconstruction")  that  the  classes  re 
cently  admitted  have  exercised  the  suffrage  with  as 
much  intelligence  and  responsibility  as  the  classes  which 
have  grown  old  in  privilege  and  stale  with  custom. 
Such  is  the  experience  of  England,  of  France,  of  our 
own  communities  at  the  North.  Many  a  negro  with 
his  hard-won  training,  or  with  his  little  farm,  is  a 
wiser  and  safer  custodian  of  the  ballot  than  the  white 
loafers  about  our  bar-rooms  or  the  transient  element  in 
the  foreign  population  of  our  industrial  and  mining 
centres. 

denied  the  right  even  to  consider  so  elementary  and  so  conservative  a 
proposal  ?  "  From  "An  Open  Letter  Against  the  Proposed  Constitu 
tional  Convention,"  by  Mr.  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  of  Mont 
gomery,  Ala.,  April  12,  1901. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  231 

And  yet,  as  I  have  already  ventured  to  suggest,  this 
is  not  at  all  the  essential  issue.  The  real  question  is  not 
as  to  whether  the  worthy  negro  has,  as  yet,  any  very 
marked  political  capacity,  but  as  to  whether  the  attitude 
of  the  State  toward  such  capacity  as  he  has,  is  to  be 
that  of  development  or  repression  ?  That,  in  a  sentence, 
is  our  question.  Is  it  to  the  interest  of  the  State  that 
there  should  be  perpetuated  within  its  limits  a  vast  * 
politically  excluded  population,  a  population  of  per 
manent  non-participants  in  the  interests,  inspirations, 
and  responsibilities  of  suffrage?  There  is  no  question 
here  as  to  the  unrestricted  admission  of  the  great  masses 
of  our  ignorant  and  semi-ignorant  blacks.  I  know  no 
advocate  of  such  admission.  But  the  question  is  as  to 
whether  the  individuals  of  the  race,  upon  conditions  of 
restriction  legally  imposed  and  fairly  administered,  shall 
be  admitted  to  adequate  and  increasing  representation 
in  the  electorate.  And  as  that  question  is  more  seriously 
and  more  generally  considered,  many  of  the  leading 
publicists  of  the  South,  I  am  glad  to  say,  are  quietly  re 
solved  that  the  answer  to  it  shall  be  affirmative. 

They  realize  that  because  of  historic  traditions  it  is 
inevitable  that  the  admitted  negroes  should  at  first 
vote  against  "the  party  of  the  soil";  that  theoretically 
if  not  actually  the  negro  group  may  sometimes  hold 

1  Mr.  Walter  F.  Willcox,  expert  statistician  of  the  Census  Bureau, 
one  of  the  least  hopeful  of  the  critics  of  negro  growth  and  progress, 
estimates  that  at  the  close  of  the  present  century  there  are  not  unlikely 
to  be  from  23,000,000  to  24,000,000  negroes  in  this  country,  —  most 
of  whom  will  be  presumably  within  the  Southern  States.  See  Mr. 
Willcox's  paper  in  "Studies  of  the  American  Race  Problem,"  by  Alfred 
H.  Stone;  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York,  1908,  p.  503.  Of 
course  the  white  increase  will  be  much  greater,  so  that  the  proportionate 
number  of  negroes  will  probably  be  smaller  than  to-day. 


232  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

"the  balance  of  power,"  but  that  the  negro  vote  is  more 
likely  to  divide  and  that  the  menace  of  its  partisan 
solidity  will  more  certainly  disappear  under  a  policy  of 
fairness  than  under  a  policy  of  discrimination.  They 
have  observed,  also,  that  the  third  party  or  the  reck 
less  faction  which  has  made  a  discreditable  alliance 
with  the  negro  vote  has  usually  met  the  inexorable 
penalty  of  the  politically  insincere  —  the  penalty  of 
popular  rebuke  and  of  temporary,  or  permanent,  an 
nihilation;  that  the  possible  peril  of  a  smaller  group 
to  the  efficiency  of  the  State  is  not  a  ground  for  de 
stroying  the  democratic  basis  of  the  State  itself  (for  upon 
that  pretext  the  Conservatives  of  the  East  might  strike 
the  ballot  from  the  hands  of  every  Socialist,  or  a  decided 
majority  might  anywhere  subvert  the  power  of  the 
minority) ;  and  that  the  only  real  remedy  for  the  abuse  of 
suffrage  lies  in  the  normal  and  automatic  reactions  of 
public  opinion.  Nor  have  they  forgotten  that  if  the 
fact  that  a  newly  admitted  class  may  theoretically  hold 
"the  balance  of  power"  is  a  valid  argument  against 
the  admission  of  worthy  negroes  to  the  ballot,  it  is  an 
argument  which  would  have  excluded  every  new  class 
which  has  been  advanced  to  the  suffrage  since  the  intro 
duction  of  the  franchise;  and  that  none  of  the  possible 
or  occasional  evils  of  a  carefully  qualified  negro  electo 
rate  are  likely  to  be  so  insidious  or  so  damaging  as  the 
deliberate  perpetuation  of  a  fixed  discrimination  against 
a  particular  class  —  a  class  permitted  in  war  to  bear  the 
responsibilities  of  the  national  defence,  forced  in  peace  to 
bear  the  responsibilities  of  the  law-observing,  of  the  tax 
payer,  of  the  free  worker  on  the  common  soil,  and  yet 
inexorably  condemned  to  a  permanent  status  of  political 


xi  ASCENDANCY  233 

humiliation.  No  population  under  such  conditions  - 
as  even  the  counsels  of  self-interest  might  suggest  —  will 
ever  reach  the  normal  measure  of  its  industrial  produc 
tivity.  Such  a  policy  is  powerless  to  touch  the  deeper 
springs  of  initiative  and  ambition;  and  the  lower  the 
original  endowment  of  initiative  the  greater  the  necessity 
for  every  legitimate  political  reenforcement  of  the  incen 
tives  to  alert  and  sustained  production. 

A  policy  of  fixed  political  humiliation  toward  any 
class  of  our  population  comports  even  less  with  our  in 
stincts  than  with  our  interests  and  our  laws.  There  is 
no  place  in  our  American  system  for  a  helot  class.1 
Our  country  is  a  democracy;  and,  whether  we  will  or 
no,  we  are  the  inheritors  of  a  Constitution.  This  is  the 
second  irreducible  factor  of  our  problem.  Not  only  is 
the  negro  a  negro,  and  not  only  is  that  fact  among  the 
realities,  but  it  is  also  among  the  realities  that  the  re 
creation  of  our  institutions  and  the  transformation  of  the 
political  and  social  assumptions  of  our  age  are  not  among 
our  privileges.  Nor  are  such  enterprises  among  our 
conjectures  or  desires.  We  want  no  fixed  and  perma 
nent  populations  of  "the  inferior."  We  may  in  every 
personal  or  social  sense  desire  separation,  —  that  is  an 
issue  of  personal  reserve.  It  trenches  upon  no  legal  or 
social  right.  It  inflicts  no  degradation  of  personal,  in 
dustrial,  or  political  status.  It  is  a  dogma  not  of 
repression,  but  of  self-protection  and  self-develop 
ment.  But  to  legislate  the  permanent  and  indis 
criminate  political  proscription  of  a  whole  population 

1  See  also  the  Memorial  Address  on  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  by  Edwin 
Anderson  Alderman,  now  President  of  the  University  of  Virginia; 
Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South,  p.  266. 


234  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

is  to  attempt  the  refounding  of  a  country  which  is  not 
exclusively  our  own,  and  the  revival  and  reconstitution 
of  an  epoch  of  class  autocracy  which  Jefferson,  Washing 
ton,  and  Marshall  had  themselves  surpassed.  Indeed, 
our  own  greater  preference  is  our  greater  country. 
The  men  of  the  South  —  whatever  may  be  their  political 
expedients  of  the  moment  —  have  seriously  no  more 
interest  in  the  reactionary  philosophies  of  caste  than 
in  the  political  conceptions  of  Nicholas  II.  If  the  con 
scious  and  deliberate  acceptance  of  such  a  status  by  the 
weaker  group  be  the  only  condition  of  "peace,"  then 
we  had  better  have  something  less  than  peace;  for  it 
would  indicate  an  absence  of  manhood  in  the  weaker 
population  far  more  serious  than  an  inadequate  or 
belated  political  capacity,  and  an  absence  of  moral 
sagacity  in  the  stronger  far  more  costly  than  any  of  the 
conceivable  consequences  of  racial  or  political  disturb 
ance.  To  rear  the  population  of  a  stronger  race  sur 
rounded  by  an  environment  of  the  lowly  and  the  menial 
is  difficult  enough,  but  to  rear  such  a  population  —  virile 
in  spirit  and  sensitive  to  the  finer  instincts  of  self-depend 
ence  —  thronged  by  the  deliberately  menial,  by  those  who 
are  not  only  inferior  but  who  have  made  a  compact  to  be 
so,  by  those  whose  lot  is  an  accepted  subordination  and 
a  consenting  subserviency,  —  would  be  more  difficult  by 
far.  The  stronger  group  within  the  South,  as  I  have 
already  tried  to  illustrate,  has  suffered  indescribably 
from  being  pressed  upon,  from  every  side,  by  a  weaker 
racial  life;  yet  this  "fate  of  the  strong"  has  been  light 
compared  to  the  fate  involving  that  higher  racial  group 
which  through  long  periods  of  time  should  be  subjected 
to  the  personal,  domestic,  and  industrial  contact  of  a  race 


xi  ASCENDANCY  235 

of  men  and  women  wearing  the  self-accepted  and  self- 
approving  status  of  perpetual  proscription.  It  would 
involve  a  peril  to  everything  in  our  life  that  is  self-resource 
ful,  wholesomely  self-respecting,  and  soundly  strong.  For 
the  member  of  a  weaker  race  to  accept  the  plain  personal 
fact,  in  this  instance  or  that,  that  his  race  is  inferior,  that 
it  has  incapacities  or  weaknesses,  is  one  thing;  for  a 
whole  race  deliberately  to  accept  a  fixed  legal  and  collec 
tive  inequality  of  status  in  a  democracy  is  quite  another 
thing ;  a  thing  as  injurious  to  the  stronger  group  as  to 
the  weaker ;  a  thing,  moreover,  which  there  is  a  Constitu 
tion  to  prevent,1  and  (should  the  Constitution  sleep)  the 
quick  instinct  of  the  South  itself  to  weigh  and  to  reject. 
Not  that  the  spirit  of  democracy  (as  we  may  again 
remind  ourselves)  is  at  war  with  reality.  Democracy, 
as  our  institutions  have  interpreted  it,  does  not  mean 
that  all  men  are  physically  or  naturally  equal,  nor  that 
all  men,  necessarily,  shall  be  entitled  to  the  ballot.  It 
is  wholly  consistent  with  the  restriction  of  suffrage.  It 
declares,  however,  that  such  restrictions  shall  bear  no 
stigma  of  class  and  that  any  fraction  of  our  citizenship, 
under  the  provisions  of  the  local  State,  shall  be  excluded 
-  if  excluded  at  all  —  only  on  the  common  terms. 

Thus,  to  the  inequalities  of  capacity  democracy  may 
not  be  wholly  blind.  General  groups  of  men  —  if  not 
arbitrarily  chosen  —  may  be  excluded  in  the  common 
interest.  Democracy  is  not  bound  in  its  distribution 
of  political  responsibilities  to  accept  the  incapable  for 

1  The  reference  here  is  not  to  the  punitive  clauses  of  the  "War 
Amendments,"  which  in  the  writer's  judgment  will  never  —  in  the 
deeper  sense  —  be  very  influential,  but  to  the  spirit  and  force  of  the 
Constitution  as  a  whole. 


236  THE  BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  capable,  to  enthrone  the  weak  above  the  strong,  or  to 
overburden  the  intelligent  with  the  multitudes  of  the 
ignorant  and  untrained.  But  there  is,  at  length,  a 
point  at  which  the  ultimate  test  of  democracy  appears. 
It  is  the  point  at  which  it  reveals,  or  fails  to  reveal, 
what  in  a  broad  and  human  sense  I  may  call  its 
educational  attitude  toward  the  factors  which  it  ex 
cludes.  Does  it  exclude  from  suffrage  in  order  finally 
to  proscribe  or  in  order  finally  to  include?  Does  it 
rear  its  restrictions  loaded  with  such  negations  of 
industrial  and  educational  opportunity  as  to  be  dis 
couragements,  —  or  conjoined  with  opportunities  which 
apply  them  and  commend  them  as  incentives?  Is 
its  administration  thus  so  ordered  as  ultimately  to 
broaden  and  strengthen  (rather  than  to  narrow)  the 
basis  of  representation  ?  And  as  to  the  relative  political 
capacities  of  its  included  groups,  capacities  which  will 
naturally  differ  from  individual  to  individual  as  well 
as  from  class  to  class,  are  these  dealt  with  in  such  man 
ner  as  to  develop  rather  than  to  repress,  —  as  gradually 
to  incorporate  them,  train  them,  and  utilize  them  as 
assets  in  the  political  contentment  and  security  of  the 
State  —  or,  by  taking  " snap- judgment"  on  their  inade 
quacies,  are  our  dogmas  of  proscription  so  timed  and 
fortified  as  to  condemn  them  to  inaction,  to  discourage 
their  true  and  eventual  growth,  and  to  transform  them 
into  embittered  and  permanent  forces  of  weakness, 
suspicion,  and  decay?  The  fundamental  issue  is,  I 
repeat,  not  as  to  the  present  relative  political  capacity 
of  the  negro,  but  as  to  whether  the  attitude  of  the  State 
toward  such  capacity  as  he  has  shall  be  that  of  de 
velopment  or  of  repression. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  237 

VI 

Such  a  question  will  largely  find  its  answer  in  the 
scope  and  efficiency  of  our  policy  of  fundamental  public 
education.  In  the  imposition  of  its  educational  "  tests," 
is  the  State  also  providing  such  efficient  institutions  of 
elementary  instruction  as  may  enable  every  factor  in  its 
population  to  meet,  and  to  find  wholesome  advantage 
in,  the  test  imposed?  Upon  no  presumption  of  expe-^ 
diency  or  right  can  we  first  disfranchise  the  masses  of  a 
population  on  the  ground  of  their  ignorance  or  on  the 
ground  of  their  incapacity,  and  then  deny  to  them 
schools  in  which  ignorance  may  be  modified  and  ca 
pacity  partially  developed. 

In  the  imposition  of  its  property  tests  (however 
elementary  these  may  be)  is  the  State  —  through  the 
equities  of  its  legislation,  the  justice  of  its  courts,  the 
stability  and  efficiency  of  its  protections  to  property  and 
life  —  inspiring  all  the  individuals  of  its  population, 
however  lowly,  to  have  confidence  in  a  policy  of  accu 
mulation  and  to  commit  themselves  to  the  practices  of 
a  patient  and  hopeful  industry  ? 

These  are  but  two  phases  of  what  I  may  call  the 
constructive  policy  of  society,  upon  its  educative  side. 
I  have  dwelt  elsewhere  so  fully  upon  the  various  phases 
of  negro  education,  and  the  sacrifices  which  the  South 
has  made  toward  negro  education  are  now  so  generally 
understood,  that  I  touch  the  subject  here  only  in  relation 
to  some  of  its  more  general  phases.  The  distinctive 
work  of  the  schools  is  of  significant  value,  —  of  value 
not  only  for  the  elementary  knowledge  and  the  mental 
quickening  which  they  initiate,  but  as  an  influence  in 


238  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

the  discipline  of  character.  But  their  work  is  as  yet  so 
poor  in  quality,  so  intermittent  and  ineffectual,  —  and 
must  inevitably  so  remain  for  so  long  a  period,  —  that 
the  general  formative  and  educative  force  of  our  com 
mon  contact  and  of  our  familiar  transactions  with  the 
race  must  remain  peculiarly  important.  This,  after  all, 
is  the  most  significant  aspect  of  the  actual  education 
which  a  stronger  group  gives  to  a  weaker.  It  may  not 
be  amiss  if,  in  a  single  sentence,  the  case  be  overstated 
in  order  to  give  it  clearness:  to  teach  any  group  of 
human  beings  to  read,  and  then  —  in  the  daily  press 
which  encompasses  it  —  to  give  it  little  to  read  concern 
ing  itself  except  the  flaring  records  of  its  crimes  or 
monotonous  comment  upon  its  faults;  to  awaken  a 
mind  (and  the  very  contact  of  our  time  is  awakening 
the  negro  mind  whether  we  give  it  a  school  or  not), 
and  then  to  touch  it  only  with  contempt;  sharply  to 
demand  the  development  of  high  character,  and  then  to 
class  it  in  with  the  lowest ;  to  insist  upon  thrift,  and  then 
to  tolerate  such  conditions  of  disadvantage  or  insecurity 
to  the  life  and  property  of  the  weak  as  to  take  from 
thrift  its  deepest  economic  basis,  —  all  this  constitutes 
an  "education"  which  cannot  be  expected  to  train  any 
race,  much  less  a  weaker  one,  into  the  life  of  a  highly 
useful  or  happy  population.  This,  after  all,  is  our 
question.  It  is  not  a  mere  question  as  to  the  "rights" 
of  the  negro,  as  to  academic  and  outworn  contentions 
of  "the  North,"  or  as  to  the  controversial  justification  of 
this  or  that  political  party.  It  is  a  question  of  practical 
and  fundamental  policy.  Is  the  negro  race  at  the  South, 
a  large  and  persistent  factor  in  our  economic  and 
political  organization,  to  be,  in  every  fundamental  sense, 


xi  ASCENDANCY  239 

a  retrogressive  or  a  cooperative  population  ?  The  negro 
masses  need  the  schools,  but  they  need  even  more  pro 
foundly  that  sort  of  education,  that  form  of  unconscious 
training,  which  is  found  in  the  quickening  of  the  fun 
damental  economic  motives  —  in  the  renewal  of  hope, 
the  arousal  of  elementary  ambitions,  the  stimulation 
of  those  industrial  tendencies  (such  as  economy,  te 
nacity,  frugality)  which  spring  from  a  larger  sense  of 
security,  from  a  more  general  confidence  in  the  average 
rewards  of  industry,  and  from  the  simpler  satisfactions 
of  educational  and  civic  opportunity.  So  to  touch 
them  and  so  to  use  them  in  the  larger  policy  of  our 
affairs  is  to  increase  both  their  power  to  produce  and 
their  power  to  purchase,  and  is  to  add  increasingly  to 
the  forces  which  must  contribute  to  the  common  devel 
opment  of  the  South.  It  is  true  that  the  acquisition 
of  these  qualities  is  not  easy  to  any  negro  population. 
Their  weaknesses  are  notorious.  Shall  we,  therefore, 
make  the  acquisition  of  such  qualities  more  difficult? 
Shall  we  best  advance  the  health  and  strength  of  the 
State  by  further  contributing  to  the  race's  demoraliza 
tion,  or  by  fostering  so  far  as  we  may  the  slow  but 
cumulative  growth  of  those  popular  capacities  and 
habits  within  which  every  government  must  find  the 
ultimate  sources  of  the  public  wealth  ? 

Deliberately  to  hold  them  within  the  fixed  stages  of 
crude  servility  and  undeveloped  capacity  is,  moreover, 
but  to  mould  the  iron  forms  of  our  own  repression. 
From  motives  both  humanitarian  and  economic  (but 
more  conspicuously  economic)  the  training  of  the  com 
mon  man,  the  development  of  every  human  industrial 
unit  of  society,  has  become  the  most  characteristic  policy 


24o  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  modern  states.  The  returns  of  such  a  policy  in 
higher  skill,  in  productive  energy,  in  larger  wealth,  in 
the  freer  and  happier  experience  of  whole  populations, 
have  promoted  it  from  the  position  of  an  elective  experi 
ment  to  the  status  of  a  now  established  assumption  of 
economic  health  and  power.  The  real  training  of  the 
masses  of  the  people  has  sometimes  seemed  the  despair 
of  statecraft.  And  yet  no  responsible  modern  govern 
ment  thinks,  or  will  ever  think  again,  of  doing  anything 
else.  The  advantage  to  the  individual  both  from  his 
own  training  and  from  his  incorporation  in  a  progressive 
industrial  organization  has  been  so  great  that  the  re 
sulting  gain  to  humanity  has  advanced  us  from  what 
has  been  called  a  deficit,  to  a  surplus,  civilization,1  —  a 
civilization  in  which  the  cumulative  processes  of  society 
have  apparently  overtaken  the  absolute  necessities  of 
consumption.  Within  the  exchanges  and  transactions 
of  such  a  fellowship  —  of  sections  and  nations  so  amaz 
ing  in  their  popular  efficiency  —  the  South  must  play 
her  part.  Upon  what  industrial  basis  shall  she  conduct 
her  competitions?  How  can  she  hold  her  own,  or  be 
anything  but  a  halting  participant  within  the  general 
body  of  the  national  supremacy,  if  her  fundamental 
policy  in  reference  to  a  vast  fraction  of  her  labor  (a  frac 
tion  which  will  be  great  no  matter  how  large  our  acces 
sions  from  without)  be  not  a  policy  of  deliberate  and 
sustained  development? 

Our  progress  —  in  the  face  of  our  difficulties  —  has 
been  inspiring.  Our  gains  will  gather  volume  as  we 

1  See  the  opening  chapter  of  "The  New  Basis  of  Civilization,"  by 
Simon  N.  Patten,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Penn 
sylvania,  New  York,  1907 ;  The  Macmillan  Company. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  241 

proceed.  The  time,  however,  will  be  soon  upon  us 
when  we  shall  not  be  able  fairly  to  compute  our  relative 
advance  in  startling  percentages  which  have  reference 
merely  to  our  own  past,  or  merely  to  isolated  phases  of 
activity,  but  when  we  must  ourselves  see  and  measure 
with  clear  eyes  the  total  present  scene  with  us,  as  con 
trasted  with  the  scene  elsewhere;  and  when  our  actual 
economic  organization,  as  expressed  in  the  average  sat 
isfactions  and  comforts  of  the  people,  must  be  viewed  in 
direct  comparison  with  like  conditions  in  other  sections 
of  our  country.  That  the  general  wealth  of  the  South 
will  ever  equal  the  wealth  of  any  section  possessing  a 
homogeneous  white  population  we  cannot  expect.  The 
average  negro  is  not,  and  apparently  will  never  be, 
individually  as  productive  as  the  average  white  man ;  — 
though  we  should  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  no  policy  of 
deliberate  development,  such  as  has  been  applied  to  other 
groups,  has  been  applied  as  yet  to  any  negro  population. 
But  the  test  of  the  mettle  of  our  statesmanship  will 
not  lie  in  any  challenge  of  the  impossible,  in  any  demand 
that  the  South  be  relatively  as  rich  as  other  sections 
(that  we  should  be  so  is  not  necessary  either  to  our 
character  or  our  happiness),  but  rather  in  the  challenge 
of  the  reasonable,  the  wise,  the  forever  possible: 
the  doing  of  the  right  thing  with  a  difficult  case,  the 
making  of  the  most  out  of  the  human  and  economic 
possibilities  of  our  situation,  the  development  and  the 
utilization  rather  than  the  repression  and  rejection 
of  such  stores  of  industrial  capacity  as  our  populations 
may  possess.  To  assume  that  in  this  day  of  the  train 
ing  of  peoples,  of  the  development  and  equipment,  not 
merely  of  a  selected  leadership,  but  of  human  aggre- 


242  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

gates,  we  can  even  measurably  succeed  upon  a  labor 
basis  of  crude  "  untrained  muscle,"  of  mere  stolid,  stupid 
animal  power,  is  to  forget  that  elementary  truth  which 
throughout  our  discussion  has  seemed  to  appear  and 
reappear  in  many  forms,  —  the  truth  that  whenever 
a  social  group  persistently  maintains,  in  relation  to  an 
included  group,  a  policy  of  constriction  and  repression, 
there  follows  the  constriction  and  repression  of  its  own 
life.  Not  only  is  it  embarrassed  and  constrained  by 
the  actual  loss  of  the  energies  and  capacities  which  it 
restricts,  but  the  reactive  force  of  its  restrictive  policies 

—  absorbing  its  mind  in  the  preoccupations  of  constraint 

—  confines  and  hardens  the  largeness  of  its  own  temper, 
the  varied  fertility  of  its  thinking,  the  scope  and  free 
dom  of  its  development.     To  be  long  busied  with  the 
task  of  holding  a  laborer  by  the  throat  is  an  engrossing, 
confining,  oppressive  occupation  —  not   to  the  laborer 
alone.     That    the    illustration,     if    literally    applied, 
would  be  unjust  does  not  alter  its  relevancy  as  a  sug 
gestion. 

VII 

It  may  seem,  in  one  sense,  that  I  have  dwelt  but  little 
upon  the  wisdom  and  necessity  for  every  policy  which 
might  promote  the  development  of  the  unprivileged 
masses  of  our  white  population ;  yet  —  in  another 
sense  —  it  may  be  said  that  I  have  written  of  but  little 
else.  I  have  given  the  subject  little  direct  discussion, 
partly  because  I  have  dwelt  upon  it  so  explicitly  else 
where,  partly  because  its  significance  commands  an 
assent  so  cogent  and  so  universal  that  its  importance 
could  happily  be  assumed. 


xi  ASCENDANCY  243 

There  can  be  no  general  basis  for  any  policy  of 
progress,  no  ground  for  any  larger  program  in  reference 
to  the  weaker  group,  except  in  so  far  as  the  masses  of 
the  stronger  race  are  themselves  more  adequately  in 
cluded  in  our  whole  philosophy  of  development.  It  is 
only  through  their  larger  fitness  to  comprehend  and 
to  believe,  that  any  wholesome  conception  of  a  free 
and  legitimate  ascendancy  can  have  consistent  popular 
support. 

And  yet  there  is  also  an  indirect  consideration  of 
the  backward  elements  of  our  white  population  in 
every  policy  which  in  its  homelier  applications  may 
give  them  better  neighbors,  may  quicken  the  dull  negro 
life  about  them  from  its  apathy  into  something  more  of 
hope  and  vigor,  which  may  turn  the  common  mind 
and  the  general  face  of  their  localities  and  communities 
outward  toward  constructive  interests,  which  may  set 
every  man  to  work  —  even  the  blackest  and  lowest  — 
in  the  knowledge  that  he  has  his  chance.  The  musty 
allegation  of  "the  man  on  the  street  corner'7  that  the 
success  of  the  negro  will  mean  "war,"  and  will  make  the 
poor  white  man  "fight,"  is  like  so  many  of  the  dogmas 
of  cheap  gossip  that  have  befogged  our  situation.  It 
is  anything  but  true.  The  ferocity  of  the  irresponsible 
is  found  at  the  South,  just  as  it  is  found  everywhere, 
but  it  expresses  no  representative  attitude  toward  the 
successful  or  unsuccessful  negro.  The  occasions  of 
racial  conflict,  as  with  all  the  occasions  of  their  mutual 
demoralization,  are  found  at  the  lower  rather  than  at 
the  higher  levels.  The  negro  man  or  woman  who  can 
really  do  something,  the  negro  farmer  who  shows  the 
qualities  of  industry  and  stability,  is  not  an  occasion 


244  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

of  fisticuffs.  Here  and  there  the  lawless  may  show 
envy  and  irritation;  but  the  worthy  negro  is  protected 
not  merely  by  the  common  habits  of  social  order  and 
of  neighborly  good  sense,  but  by  those  forces  of  public 
and  economic  self-interest  which  in  every  community 
come  to  the  support  of  the  life  which  is  an  asset,  and 
which  protect  everywhere  the  citizen  with  something  to 
sell  and  with  money  to  buy.  Where  our  negroes  are 
failing,  are  hopeless  and  sullen  and  self-abandoned,  we 
know  that  all  things  are  insecure  and  that  every  man 
is  relatively  poorer.  Where  our  negroes  are  succeeding, 
we  know  that  each  life  is  safer,  that  the  general  wealth 
in  circulation  is  greater,  that  every  man  is  a  little 
stronger,  freer,  and  richer. 

Just  why  we  should  distrust  as  a  policy  for  the  State  a 
policy  which  we  thus  know  to  be  sound  for  the  neigh 
borhood,  it  would  be  difficult  to  explain.  Yet  it  is  in  the 
clear  light  of  our  homely,  daily,  immediate  experience 
as  well  as  in  the  light  of  the  ethical  and  economic  sug 
gestions  upon  which  I  have  so  long  dwelt,  that  we  shall 
find  the  principles  of  that  constructive  policy  through 
which  we  may  advance  the  national  position  and  the 
new  ascendancy  of  the  South.  As  already  suggested, 
this  new  ascendancy  may  seem  to  involve  a  double  task 
-  a  task  in  relation  to  the  included  group  and  a  task 
in  relation  to  that  larger  national  group  within  which 
the  South  is  itself  included.  But  we  have  found  that 
these  tasks  are,  in  a  measure,  one;  that  it  is  largely  in 
relation  to  the  included  group  that  the  South,  through 
all  the  forms  of  her  public  policy,  is  defining  the 
nature  of  her  relation  both  to  the  forces  of  her  own 


xi  ASCENDANCY  245 

economic  power  and  to  the  contingencies  of  national 
and  international  need.  In  her  wise  handling  of  the 
one  problem  lies  her  escape  from  local  failure  and  her 
opportunity  for  general  service.  We  shall  win  the 
distinctions  of  such  a  destiny  —  if  we  are  permitted  to 
win  them  at  all  —  not,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  the  basis 
of  our  conquest  of  the  impossible,  not  by  the  hot-house 
advancement  of  a  different  social  group  into  the  posses 
sion  of  characteristics  to  which  it  may  never  have  been 
destined  and  into  a  range  of  efficiency  precisely  parallel 
with  that  of  stronger  peoples,  but  just  by  dealing  greatly 
with  a  great  difficulty,  —  by  the  sobriety  and  flexibility 
of  mind,  the  genius  of  resource,  the  sanity  of  temper, 
the  moral  tenacity  and  the  intellectual  courage  with 
which  we  may  contribute  from  the  ground  of  our  special 
experience  to  what,  just  now,  is  the  imminent  special 
problem  of  the  world.  Its  solution  will  be  long 
delayed.  Its  difficulties  will  yield  to  no  immediate 
formula.  But  to  us  as  we  are  busied  with  the  creation 
of  adequate  institutions,  and  of  a  society  rich  in  its 
satisfactions  and  generous  in  the  freedom,  solidity,  and 
happiness  of  its  culture,  the  supreme  question  (to  adopt 
one  of  the  commonplaces  of  illustration)  is  not  the  date 
of  our  arrival  but  the  right  direction  of  our  progress,  — 
is  not  the  precise  hour  of  the  harvest  but  the  soundness 
of  our  tillage  and  the  wisdom  of  our  sowing.  Few  of 
the  great  problems  of  human  development,  as  we  have 
before  observed,  have  ever  been  finally  "  solved." 
That  our  own  problem  should  be  thus  "  solved  "  is  per 
haps  unnecessary.  Yet  to  us  it  is  supremely  necessary 
that  this  problem  should  become  in  us  no  occasion  of 
our  industrial  and  political  undoing.  If  it  be  not  thus 


246  THE   BASIS  OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP. 

an  occasion  of  our  failure,  if  it  yield  us,  as  we  proceed, 
less  and  less  of  political  cynicism  and  of  spiritual 
despair,  and  something  more  of  social  confidence  and 
intellectual  power,  then  in  the  larger  view  of  things  our 
problem  is  solved  already,  —  for  we  shall  have  found 
in  such  health  that  sense  of  health  which  is  the  joy  of 
living :  no  unfinished  civilization  has  anything  better  to 
desire,  no  "  finished  "  civilization  has  anything  better  to 
remember. 

And  what  is  this  sense  of  health,  this  consciousness 
of  adequate  and  normal  growth,  but  the  responsive 
answer  of  every  fraction  and  factor  within  a  free  and 
responsive  commonwealth  ?  A  democratic  state  which 
while  protecting  its  higher  groups  protects  them  not  in 
order  to  destroy  the  weaker  but  in  the  interest  of  its 
total  life,  which  imposes  its  reservations  and  restrictions 
not  as  denials  of  opportunity  but  as  educative  forces  of 
its  development,  will  have  attained,  at  least  in  principle, 
the  ultimate  method  of  political  and  social  progress. 
For  as  it  pursues  this  principle  in  the  varied  forms  and 
phases  of  its  public  policy  it  will  discover  within  even 
the  highest  levels  of  its  life  the  educative  reaction  of  all 
its  institutional  provisions,  —  that  justice  in  its  courts 
will  educate  both  the  powerful  and  the  lowly  —  the 
lowly  in  the  sense  of  security  and  peace,  the  powerful  in 
the  sense  of  honor  and  the  temper  of  equity;  that  a 
popular  faith  in  the  schools  will  advance  the  compre 
hension  and  sagacity  of  the  strong  as  well  as  the  training 
of  the  weak ;  that  an  efficient  police,  impartially  enforc 
ing  an  impartial  law,  will  sensibly  contribute  to  that 
established  and  instinctive  prevalence  of  public  order 
which  is  the  best  protection  of  the  life  and  property  of 


xi  ASCENDANCY  247 

every  class;  and  that  the  fairness  of  our  reward  to 
labor  is  in  large  degree  the  measure  of  the  cogency  of 
our  invitation  to  the  productive  capital  of  the  world. 
As  every  informing  custom  or  creative  institution  thus 
touches  our  lower  or  weaker  groups,  it  reacts  upon  the 
strong  as  but  another  of  the  determining  forces  within 
the  life  and  growth  of  a  modern  state, — a  state  embar 
rassed  though  not  defeated  by  the  abnormal  perplexities 
presented  through  its  divergent  and  contrasted  popula 
tions,  and  rinding  in  the  educative  equity  of  its  adjust 
ments  and  in  the  social  discipline  of  its  political  situation 
no  occasion  of  self-satisfaction  or  self-pity,  but  oppor 
tunities  of  peculiar  achievement,  of  national  and  inter 
national  service. 


It  may  seem  strange  that  our  own  distinctive  task 
should  be  one  of  such  peculiar  difficulty.  And  yet, 
as  one  observes  at  Westminster  that  grateful  legend 
upon  the  memorial  of  the  elder  Pitt,  he  is  reminded 
that  not  infrequently  the  supreme  difficulty  in  the  life 
of  peoples,  as  in  the  experience  of  individuals,  is  the 
occasion  of  the  supreme  distinction.  Out  of  England's 
isolation  —  set  as  a  little  island  in  unfriendly  seas  — 
came  that  policy  of  naval  strength  which  became  the 
opportunity  and  the  fact  of  empire.  So,  the  Kingdom 
of  the  Netherlands  rose  out  of  its  supreme  difficulty,  - 
its  people  finding,  in  their  struggle  against  their  floods, 
not  merely  a  larger  land  beneath  their  feet,  but  new 
fidelities  of  patience,  stronger  powers  of  resolution,  a 
deeper  unity  of  mind,  —  a  larger  country  within  the 
heavens. 


248  THE   BASIS   OF  ASCENDANCY  CHAP,  xi 

Those  lands  which  are  conscious  of  a  great  difficulty 
are  not  poor.  The  poor  land  is  that  which,  having  no 
great  difficulty,  busies  itself  with  the  fictions  of  its  im 
portance  ;  —  or  the  land  having  a  great  difficulty,  but 
finding  no  way  out  of  its  imperturbable  complacency. 
It  was  through  the  negro  in  our  experience  that  the  South 
once  lost  her  mastery,  her  mastery  not  over  him  alone, 
but  over  those  opportunities  for  a  national  leadership 
and  for  an  uninterrupted  eminence  of  service  to  which 
her  capacities  entitled  her.  It  may  be  that  through  this 
same  strange,  waiting,  baffling  factor  in  her  life,  her 
ascendancy,  in  higher  forms,  may  again  return,  —  in 
forms  not  threatening  the  estate  and  dignity  of  labor, 
the  sway  of  freedom,  the  instinct  and  custom  of  our 
age,  but  bestowed  by  a  labor  which  she  has  freed,  and 
by  an  age  and  a  democracy  which,  in  her  service  to 
their  profoundest  task,  she  has  supremely  justified. 


INDEX 


ACTON,  Lord,  42. 

AFRICA,  absence  of  collective 
achievement,  42,  79;  its  in 
ternational  "intrusion,"  85; 
reemergence  of,  82;  race 
influence  of  reemergence,  85, 
86. 

AGRICULTURALDlVERSIFICATION, 
149. 

ALDERMAN,     Edwin     Anderson, 

233- 
AMERICAN   INDIAN,   no   parallel 

in,  82. 
ASCENDANCY,    varied   forms   of, 

209. 

BAKER,  Ray  Stannard,  75. 
BOYD-ALEXANDER,  60. 
BROOKS,  John  Graham,  115. 
BRYCE,   James,   44. 
BUTLER,  Bishop,  203. 

COERCION,  the  new,  175. 
COMPETITION,  and  survival,  64, 

65- 
CONSCIOUSNESS,   of   Kind,  xviii, 

xix. 
CONSTITUTIONAL     CONVENTION, 

letter  on,  229. 
COTTON  MONOPOLY,  dangers  of, 

149. 
CURZON,  Lord,  83. 

DEMOCRACY,  as  a  world  move 
ment,  196,  219. 

DESPAIR,  as  a  force  of  dis 
integration,  97,  108. 

DISINTEGRATION,  its  social  peril, 
107,  in. 


DIVERSIFICATION,      agricultural, 

149. 

DOWD,  Jerome,  60. 
DUNNING,  W.  A.,  184,  185. 

ECONOMIC  FORCES,  social  sig 
nificance  of,  xiv,  239. 

EDUCATION,  a  conservative  in 
fluence,  99,  100 ;  and  race 
solidarity,  106;  its  power 
against  negro  demagoguery, 
113;  its  aid  to  negro  leader 
ship,  115;  of  white  population 
imperative  and  fundamental, 
242,  243. 

EMPIRE,  movement  of,  218. 

GIDDINGS,  Franklin   Henry,  xix, 

94. 
GREEK,  patriotism  of  race,  xx. 

HARRISON,  Frederick,  xiv. 

IMMIGRATION,  145. 
INDIAN,  American,  82. 
INHERITANCE,  the  Indivisible,  3. 
INVASION,  injuries  of  social,  77. 

JEW  AND  GENTILE,  77. 

LABOR,  diversification    of,    147; 

importance     of      its     general 

position,  xv,  239. 
LECKY,  W.  E.  H.,  28. 

MARSHALL,  Alfred,  xv,  147. 
MILL,  John  Stuart,  xv,  146. 
MILLER,  Kelly,  43,  68. 
MINORITY,     Negro,    significance 

of,  104,  109,  114. 
MULATTO,  the,  43. 


249 


250 


INDEX 


NEGRO,  peril  of  his  bankruptcy, 
107,  in;  his  education  a 
conserving  force,  99;  its  ser 
vice  to  negro  leadership,  115; 
the  negro  woman,  58;  her 
importance  and  progress,  60; 
negro  limitations  universally 
admitted,  226;  restrictions 
should  be  not  repressive  but 
educative,  236  fol. 

OPPORTUNITY,  integrating  force 
of,  97. 

PAGE,  Walter  H.,  214. 

PATTEN,  Simon  N.,  240. 

PENAL      SYSTEM,      its      deeper 

penalty,  126. 
PRESENT  SOUTH,  The,    quoted, 

xi,  54,  128,  224. 

RACE    AGGRESSION,  impulse  of, 

25- 
RACE    SECURITY,    double    basis 

of,  51. 
RACIAL    COSMOPOLITANISM,    its 

possible  evil,  xvii. 
REACTIONS,       Social,      capacity 

for  utilization  of,   168. 
REN  AN,  Ernest,  19. 
RHODES,  James  Ford,  6,  184. 
ROYCE,  Josiah,  xiii,  xvi. 


SCHURZ,  Carl,  178,  184. 

SECURITY,  Economic,  as  a 
condition  of  thrift,  xiv,  239. 

SELF-PROTECTION,  protest  of 
our,  15. 

SETTEMBRINI,  iii. 

SEWANEE  REVIEW,  29. 

SLAVERY,  Negro's  transition  from, 
62. 

SMITH,  Sydney,  98. 

SOCIAL  REACTIONS,  educative 
power  of,  143. 

STEVENS,  Thaddeus,  6. 

STONE,  A.  H.,  xiii,  231. 

STRONG,  the  fate  of  the,  121. 

SUFFRAGE,  restrictions  neces 
sary,  1 6,  18;  their  adminis 
tration,  231,  233,  236;  their 
spirit  should  be  educative 
rather  than  repressive,  235. 

VILLARI,   Pasquale,  iii. 

WASHINGTON,    Booker     T.,    68. 

WHITE  POPULATION,  as  a  race 
party,  132;  frequent  kind 
liness  to  negro,  123;  educa 
tion  of  its  masses  imperative 
and  fundamental,  242,  243. 

WILLCOX,  Walter    F.,    xiii,   231. 

WOODS,  Robert  A.,  75. 


FOURTH  PRINTING 

THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 

A  DISCUSSION  OF  CERTAIN  OF 
THE  EDUCATIONAL,  INDUSTRIAL 
AND  POLITICAL  ISSUES  IN  THE 
SOUTHERN  STATES;  BY  :  :  :  : 

EDGAR    GARDNER    MURPHY 

(Cloth,  I2mo,  335  pages,  $l-5O  net;  by  mail,  $1.66) 

Chapters:  I.  The  Old  in  the  New.— II.  The  Schools  of  the  People. 
—  III.  A  Constructive  Statesmanship.  —  IV.  The  Industrial  Revival 
and  Child  Labor.  —  V.  Child  Labor  and  the  Industrial  South.  —  VI. 
The  South  and  the  Negro. — VII.  A  Narrative  of  Cooperation.  —  VIII. 
Culture  and  Democracy.  —  Appendices,  Statistical  Tables,  Etc. 

"An  extraordinary  sociologic  and  political  study." 

—  New  York  Times  Saturday  Review  {Editorial}. 

"  A  volume  of  noble  spirit,  full  of  fact  and  wisdom." 

—  The  Independent,  New  York. 

"  The  truest  interpretation  the  South  has  ever  had  to  the  world  at  large." 

—  The  Advertiser,  Montgomery,  Ala. 

"  The  sociological  importance  of  this  book  .  .  .  cannot  be  overesti 
mated." 

—  The  Press,  Philadelphia,  Penn. 

"  I  can  hardly  thank  you  enough.  I  have  read  it  not  only  with  the 
intensest  interest,  but  with  the  greatest  delight." 

—  The  late  CARL  SCHURZ,  New  York  City. 

"  The  most  important  single  book  for  one  who  would  understand  what 

its  subject  propounds." 

—  The  Berea  Quarterly,  Berea,  Ky. 

"  His  writings  put  before  us  the  attitude  of  the  finest  intelligence  and 
conscience  of  the  South  on  the  great  national  problems  which  are 

there  acute." 

—  The  New  York  Tribune. 

"  A  book  of  national  importance.  Not  since  the  close  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  therefore  not  since  the  South  began  to  deal  with  its  present 
problems,  has  there  been  a  contribution  of  such  importance  to  a  clear 
understanding  of  those  problems  as  that  which  Mr.  MURPHY  has  made." 

—  The  Outlook,  New  York. 


"  Mr.  MURPHY'S  splendid  book." 

—  The  Richmond  Dispatch,  Richmond,  Va. 

"  Trenchant,  informing,  fair." 

—  The  Watchman,  Boston,  Mass. 

"  A  welcome  and  grateful  addition  to  the  discussion." 

—  The  Post,  Washington,  D.C. 

"A  most  valuable  work.  Mr.  MURPHY  is  a  recognized  authority  on 
the  subject." 

—  The  State,  Columbia,  S.C. 

"  The  author  is  thoroughly  informed  and  probably  the  most  reliable 
authority  on  the  matters  which  he  discusses." 

—  The  Congregationalist,  Boston,  Mass. 

"An  interpretation,  in  noble  and  vigorous  English,  of  the  hopeful  and 
progressive  tendencies  in  the  present  South." 

—  Leslie's  Weekly,  New  York. 

"  Striking  and  illuminating  essays.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  book 
will  attain  both  at  the  North  and  at  the  South  the  wide  circulation  to 
which  its  merits  so  amply  entitle  it." 

—  The  News  and  Courier,  Charleston,  S.  C. 


"  It  is  the  most  important  document  yet  issued  and  will  do  more  to 
bring  about  true  union  of  all  the  States  than  anything  that  has 
appeared  since  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  address." 

—  EDWARD  ATKINSON,  Boston,  Mass. 

"We  have  had  many  books  written  upon  this  subject;   we  are  likely  to 
have  many  more;   we  have  not  had,  so  far,  one  more  important;  we 
are  not  likely  to  have  one  that  is  so  hereafter,  all  things  considered." 
—  JOHN  WHITE  CHADWICK,  in  Unity,  Chicago,  III. 

"  Wide  as  is  the  scope  of  these  topics  there  is  nothing  of  the  superficial 
or  the  half-baked  to  be  found  on  a  single  page.  .  .  .  Mr.  MURPHY'S 
broad  interests  and  rarely  excellent  equipment  fit  him  peculiarly  to 
represent  the  progressive  and  thoughtful  South  on  every  issue  vital  to 
this  section." 

—  The  News,  Nashville,  Tenn. 


"Viewing  the  whole  matter  with  unusual  impartiality  and  fairness." 

—  The  Record-Herald,  Chicago,  III. 

"  A  book  so  distinguished  by  its  grasp,  its  breadth,  its  extreme  wisdom, 
sanity,  and  deep  moral  sense  that  I  venture  to  predict  it  will  prove 
epoch-making  in  the  discussion  of  the  subject  with  which  it  deals." 
—  Dr.  FELIX  ABLER,  Professor  of  Political  and  Social  Ethics  in 
Columbia  University,  New  York. 

"  Avoids  no  issue,  shirks  no  fact,  and  brings  to  the  various  problems  of 
the  South  a  clear  vision,  a  sound  logic,  a  temperance,  and  a  devotion 
that  are  full  of  the  very  essence  of  patriotism.  It  is  impossible  to  over 
praise  such  a  book  —  to  overestimate  the  effect  of  its  poise,  its  sanity, 
its  wisdom." 

—  The  Post,  Louisville,  Ky. 

"  So  far  from  going  North  for  his  ideas,  he  is  conveying  to  the  North 
the  very  best  thought  of  the  South.  .  .  .  We  will  say  for  the  book 
that  it  has  given  us  a  better,  a  clearer,  a  more  optimistic  view  of  the 
South  that  was,  the  South  that  is,  and  the  South  that  is  to  be,  than  all 
the  other  books  that  we  know  anything  about." 

—  The  Biblical  Recorder,  Raleigh,  N.  C. 

"  The  volume  sheds  a  clear  light  on  conditions  of  which  those  outside 
of  the  limits  covered  have  no  clear  conception,  and  has  therefore  a  dis 
tinct  educational  mission.  Of  the  innumerable  books  which  have  been 
written  during  the  last  twenty  years  on  the  unsettled  questions  of  the 
South  it  is  the  sanest,  fairest,  most  practical,  and  most  suggestive  that 
we  have  read." 

—  The  Evening  Transcript,  Boston,  Mass. 

"  Written  with  an  unusually  intimate  knowledge  of  Southern  sentiment 
and  with  a  rare  breadth  of  vision.  We  have  long  regarded  Mr. 
MURPHY'S  'The  Task  of  the  South'  [in  substance  included  in  this 
volume]  as  the  very  ablest  deliverance  in  behalf  of  universal  education 
that  has  yet  been  made  by  a  Southern  man,  and  'The  Present  South' 
is  marked  by  the  same  statesmanlike  qualities."  —  CLARENCE  H.  POE  : 
Editorial  in  The  Progressive  Farmer,  Raleigh,  N.  C. 

"  It  marks  an  epoch  in  the  statesmanlike  treatment  of  Southern  issues. 
In  this  volume  is  found  the  best  thought  of  our  people  stated  so  clearly, 
so  cogently,  so  calmly,  that  he  who  runs  may  read  and  he  who  reads 
must  agree.  Mr.  MURPHY  is  true  to  the  past.  The  thoughtful  Southern 
man  finds  his  convictions  formulated  and  reinforced  by  a  sinewy  style, 
wealth  of  facts,  and  masterful  reasoning."  —  Dr.  S.  C.  MITCHELL, 
President  of  the  University  of  South  Carolina,  Columbia,  S.C. 


"  The  substance  and  spirit  of  this  volume  might  easily  have  been 
produced  by  any  one  of  a  dozen  men  of  the  new  South  .  .  .  though  it 
is  doubtful  if  many  of  these  Southern  celebrities  could  have  equalled, 
or  any  of  them  surpassed,  Mr.  MURPHY  in  power  and  charm  of  literary 

style." 

—  KELLY  MILLER,  in  the  Dial,  Chicago,  III. 

"  Words  of  truth  and  soberness.  With  a  full  knowledge  of  the  facts, 
and  in  an  admirable  spirit,  the  author  examines  certain  of  the  educa 
tional,  industrial,  and  political  issues  in  the  Southern  States.  These 
papers  should  be  read  carefully  and  sympathetically  by  all  Northerners 
who  comprehend  that  the  day  has  gone  by  when  the  North  could  be 
alleged  to  constitute  the  Nation." 

—  The  New  York  Sun  [Editorial). 

"We  can  hardly  speak  too  highly  of  the  breadth,  the  sanity,  the 
humanness,  and  the  wise  self-restraint  which  mark  the  utterances  of 
this  volume.  He  faces  the  actual  situation  in  every  direction  in  which 
he  explores,  and  by  his  answers  to  objections,  by  his  exposure  of 
fallacies,  by  his  strenuous  arguments,  he  makes  an  exhibit  in  behalf  of 
the  cause  he  represents  which  should  command  admiration  and  awaken 
cooperation  in  all  sections  of  the  land." 

—  The  Christian  Advocate,  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

"  It  is  rare  that  any  writer  or  speaker  when  discussing  any  phase  of  the 
Southern  question  does  so  with  entire  absence  of  prejudice  and  passion 
and  applies  a  strictly  judicial  temperament  in  the  stating  of  his  views. 
...  It  is  refreshing  as  well  as  encouraging  to  find  a  writer  who 
discusses  the  South  and  the  race  question  with  the  temper  of  a  judge, 
and  in  the  manner  of  a  scholar.  .  .  .  Nothing  in  the  way  of  a  'review' 
can  do  the  book  justice;  it  should  be  read  if  one  would  be  informed 
and  helped  by  it."  — BOOKER  T.  WASHINGTON,  in  an  article  on  "The 
Present  South  "  /  contributed  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1904. 

"  In  spite  of  constant  interruptions  I  have  stuck  to  your  book  until  I 
have  read  it  over  twice,  and  I  feel  that  I  must  in  common  honesty  send 
you  a  word  to  let  you  know  how  deeply  I  am  indebted  to  you  for  the 
pleasure  and  profit  I  have  found  in  it.  I  have  read  nothing  referring 
to  the  vital  questions  it  discusses,  at  all  comparable  with  your  book  in 
vigor,  fairness,  and  lucidity." — The  late  JOHN  HAY,  Secretary  of  State  ; 
sometime  Ambassador  from  the  United  States  to  Great  Britain. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

LONGMANS,    GREEN,   AND    CO. 

91  and  93  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 
LONDON,   BOMJ3AX..4ND  CALCUTTA 


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Or 


14  DAY  USE 

TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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^newed  books  are  subien- 1«  ;, 


R^n«      juL!    ;  aate  to  which  renewed, 
enewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall 


This 


LD  21A-60m-4,'64 
(E4555slO)476B 


.General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


35 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


i 


217090 


